Spirit Force
by UKHoneyB
Summary: The Spiritual powers have been around for centuries, harnessed by many but controlled by few. Now, it’s the turn of a new group of Rangers…[On hiatus until otherwise stated]
1. Revival of a Legend

**Disclaimer:** I don't own the central concept of Power Rangers. I do, however, own the characters and powers detailed in this story. Unless something goes drastically wrong, this story will be updated weekly, around Friday/Saturday.

Thanks to Cat McDougall for beta'ing this for me!

Chapter One – Revival of a Legend:

"What's wrong? You called me out of class for no good reason…you'd better have a good reason for dragging me out of class." The red ranger took off his helmet as he walked into the control room. He had scruffy-looking blond hair and gray eyes, and there was something about his personality that reminded the yellow ranger of her old ex-boyfriend.

_Paging the department of redundancies department,_ the yellow ranger thought as she rolled her eyes as the red ranger's comment. The yellow ranger seemed to be the opposite of the red ranger, in both appearance and personality. Her red hair was tied up in a messy ponytail, and her blue eyes were at the moment glued to a microscope. "One of the coins is reacting to a human presence. Looks like we've got a new pink ranger somewhere out there."

The red ranger looked slightly disgruntled. "You dragged me out of class for _this_?"

"And you're complaining?" the yellow ranger said, tearing her attention away from the microscope to look at the red ranger.

"Well, I-um…not really, but I was expecting something a little more _interesting_ than hearing that we might have a new pink ranger on the loose in Angel Grove." The red ranger walked over to where the yellow ranger was working and leaned against the desk.

The yellow ranger raised an eyebrow before turning her attention back to the microscope and adjusting the focus on it. "A new pink ranger is important news; I doubt you'd want to fight against a strong alien when there's only two people on your team, Markus. You've seen that more odd occurrences have been making it to the news, we're gonna need all the help we can get."

Markus sighed. "Yeah, yeah, next time, call me when something important's happening, like Angel Grove being destroyed." He turned around, hand pressed on his morpher to teleport out of the building, when Aneka interrupted him.

"D'you know someone called Rosa?"

"Uh…yeah, why?"

"…No reason," Aneka said after a slight hesitation. Markus frowned at her, but teleported out of the control room in a flash of red light. "This is not going to be good. It's not going to be good at all."

ooooooooooooooo

Rosa sighed, rubbing a hand across her eyes. The one day she didn't get detention and Markus had to skip out on his last class. According to a couple of his friends, he had rushed out of the room after his cell had gone off, looking extremely worried.

"At least he's not as bad as Taro," Rosa muttered to herself. "Only time I see him is when he's slipping out of class." She started slightly when a black cat ran across the road, but ignored it and simply shook her head when it disappeared into someone's garden.

"Why am I so nervous?" Rosa rolled her eyes. "You do know you're talking to yourself, right?"

A sharp meow brought Rosa out of her thoughts and caused her to awkwardly side-step, nearly toppling over someone's garden wall. Looking over her shoulder, she placed a hand on the wall to try and steady herself, before looking down at the cat.

"Oh, you again," Rosa muttered as the black cat sat on its haunches, staring up at Rosa and meowing, the sound echoing throughout the street. "Oh, fine, fine, I'll pay attention to you."

Rosa picked up the cat and placed in on the wall and began searching for a collar and nametag. Finding nothing, she frowned as she stroked the cat, mentally checking it over.

"Well, you don't look like a stray, maybe you just lost your collar somewhere?" Rosa muttered, mainly for her own benefit than thinking that the cat would actually understand her. That cat seemed to have understood her a little; its ears had pricked up when Rosa had begun talking and now, with one short meow, it leapt off the wall and began to run away.

"Hey, wait –" Rosa shook her head in annoyance and began to walk in the opposite direction the cat had run, towards her house. _I've got zero time for this._ A few minutes later, she was walking up the path leading to the front door of her house…and the black cat was sitting on the top step.

"I always pulled 'this animal followed me home, can we keep him' trick, but I never imagined an animal would find its way to my home _before_ I did," Rosa said, running a hand through her hair in confusion. "This is so gonna be hard to explain to my mom."

The cat turned to look at Rosa as she walked closer, its eyes seeming to change color to a very faint pink before returning to the normal amber color it had had when Rosa had first encountered it.

"Okay…that's weird, never seen a cat do that before," Rosa muttered as she dumped her bag onto the ground, cautiously walking towards the cat, her hand outstretched. The cat looked over the equivalent of its shoulder before creeping towards Rosa's hand and sniffed it gingerly.

"It's all right," Rosa said, trying to comfort the cat. Something had happed to it between Rosa finding it and it making its way to her house; it was definitely scared of something.

Stepping back, the cat hissed at Rosa, and when she tried to approach it, it scratched her, leaving two deep furrows in her hand. Hissing slightly, Rosa jerked her hand back and inspected it. Already, the bleeding had ceased and the wound was starting to close. It was happening so fast that Rosa could actually see the scab forming, then falling off as new skin was created underneath.

"What the –" she looked at the cat in confusion once again, falling onto her backside as the cat exploded into a fine pink mist, which Rosa had no choice but to breathe in.

As the last remnants of the pink cloud disappeared, Rosa felt a tingling sensation in the tips of her fingers, like she had been sitting on them and feeling was now returning to them. The sensation spread from her fingertips up her arms then split into two paths, one traveling towards her head, the other moving through her torso, and a few seconds later, her legs and feet.

Pink light exploded in front of Rosa's eyes once the feeling was covering every part of her body. The light existed for only a second before it disappeared, and in Rosa's place there was now a pink power ranger.

"This is not the kind of day I'd imagine I'd have when I woke up this morning," Rosa said to herself as she looked at her gloved hands through her helmet. Her uniform was pretty nondescript; all pink except for her boots, gloves and an upside-down triangle on her back. Around her waist was some sort of utility belt, although it was empty at that moment in time. The top of her helmet was in the shape of a cat, the visor being its open mouth.

"There is no way I'm a ranger," Rosa said in a half-whisper as she stood in front of her house, not having moved at all during the entire transformation period. An ear-splitting shriek drew her attention skywards where a group of half a dozen monsters were circling in the sky above Rosa's house.

_Ranger or not, there's no one else here to fight these things,_ Rosa thought as the creatures began to descend. They looked relatively human, with the only differentiations being the pair of huge bat wings attached to their shoulder blades, slightly graying skin and eyes tinted with yellow.

"Cat bow!" Rosa called, and in a flash of pink light the named weapon appeared in her hands, along with a quiver of arrows in a basket attached to her back. Rosa looked at the bow in confusion; she had only discovered that she was a ranger, how did she know how to call her weapon?

Quick movement out of the corner of her eye drew Rosa back into reality, and she blocked the creature's attack with her bow. While Rosa had called her weapon and was wondering where it had appeared from, the bat-like creatures had landed. As the creature's hand hit Rosa's bow, the weapon split into two small daggers, a secondary weapon. _Well, that's useful,_ Rosa thought as she started to attack.

A slice across the shoulder, a nick in their wings, and the bat-creatures shrank back, looking at each other in mild confusion. Evidently, they hadn't expected Rosa to fight back this quickly.

"Aww, come on, don't tell me you're giving up," Rosa said, smirking slightly under her helmet. She hadn't been able to let loose like this in months; her karate instructor had warned her that any more 'accidents' and he would have her kicked out of the class. "What's the matter, can't stand a little challenge?"

As the creatures milled around, Rosa attempted to recombine the daggers back into her bow, and succeeded on the second try. Pulling an arrow from her quiver, which had also appeared when she'd called her bow, she drew it back and fired it at the nearest creature. With a little more than what could be considered mild interest, Rosa watched as the creature exploded into black smoke, quickly drifting away.

"Now, who's next?" Rosa said, turning to look at the remaining five creatures. Two of them exchanged glances before rushing at Rosa at the same time. Rosa managed to fire off one shot at one of the three stationary creatures before the two moving ones slammed into her.

Glaring at the creatures, Rosa quickly split her bow into the two daggers, and began to slash at the nearer of the two creatures. Although multiple wounds appeared on the creature's body, it didn't relent in its pursuit of Rosa, and soon she was beginning to feel the first tinges of exhaustion.

A final slash across the injured creature's chest, and it too disappeared into a puff of black smoke, but there were still four more creatures to contend with. The second creature who had rushed at Rosa had backed off slightly, allowing Rosa to reform her bow and fire some arrows at the distant group of creatures. Two of them, including the one she had hit earlier, exploded into black smoke which left two for Rosa to contend with.

Rosa bent over slightly, trying to catch her breath before the next creature tried to attack her. The creature nearest Rosa turned to look at its team-make, creating sounds like a bird would make and which sounded extremely strange coming from a human-looking creature.

Without another glance, the two remaining creatures took flight, leaving Rosa staring at them in bewilderment. She snapped her bow into the two daggers, holding one on each side of her body, her stance relaxed yet ready for another fight if necessary.

"Shall I assume that you're the new ranger?" someone said behind Rosa. She whirled around, pressing a dagger to the stranger's throat. Although the morphing suits gave protection against injuries, a slashed neck was a definite killer.

Rosa dropped the dagger when she saw that the person she was about to attack had been another ranger, and she sighed. "Sorry, I've just been attacked by these weird bat-like creatures."

"Ah, Batmors. No worries, three hits and they're practically destroyed," the red ranger said, a slightly cocky tone in his voice.

"Yeah, I kinda figured that out on my own. Do you have any ide–" Rosa stopped mid-sentence, and hand flying up to press against her forehead. "Great time for a stre–" Before Rosa could even finish her sentence again, she collapsed, unconscious.

"Woah!" On reflex, the red ranger caught Rosa before she hit the ground. He looked at her for a few moments before exhaling in annoyance and picking her up in his arms. "Back to base then," he muttered. "Aneka'll be glad that I found the new pink ranger," he added, teleporting back to the ranger base Aneka had built.

ooooooooooooooo

"Don't you ever go home?" the red ranger, aka Markus, asked as he appeared in the center of the ranger's base, seeing her figure still hunched over a microscope. "Or is _this_ your home?"

"Very funny Markus," Aneka muttered, looking up from what she had been studying and turning around to look at Markus. Her eyes widened as she saw the pink ranger, morphed but still unconscious, in Markus' arms. "Mind explaining what happened here?"

Markus shrugged, a very difficult task to accomplish while holding someone. "We've got a new pink ranger."


	2. Relationships and Truth

Thanks to Cat McDougall for beta'ing this for me, and thanks to xo Concrete Angel ox, Hagar and Akili for reviewing.

Chapter Two – Relationships and Truth:

"How is she?" Markus asked, dogging Aneka's footsteps as she carried the pink ranger into the medical bay. "What happened?"

"Power overload, happened to me once," Aneka said, placing the pink ranger on an empty bed. "She'll be fine once she wakes up."

"Great," Markus said, sighing in relief. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a ton of homework due in tomorrow."

"When did you get it?" Aneka asked as Markus demorphed and glanced over at the pink ranger.

"Err…last week?" he said in embarrassment as he teleported out of the medical bay in a flash of red light. Aneka, with a smile on her face, simply shook her head and turned her attention back to the pink ranger.

"Strange, she didn't demorph on her own," Aneka muttered to herself, pressing a few buttons on the pink ranger's communicator. The pink ranger's morphing suit disappeared in a flash of pink light, revealing the latest addition to the team to be Rosa.

"Markus is so gonna kill me when he finds this out," Aneka said as she used a handheld device to check that Rosa had no unseen injuries.

_Definite power overload,_ Aneka thought to herself as she checked the readout on the screen, walking out of the medical bay and locking the door behind her. Power overloads weren't dangerous in themselves, but falling unconscious in the middle of a battle definitely was. Fortunately for both Rosa and Aneka, a previously morphed ranger had been there to help them.

"Now, college work or repair the base?" Aneka mused as she stood in the center of the control room, which was a mess of wires and dislodged cover panels.

ooooooooooooooo

_Maybe this wasn't the_ best _place to do homework,_ Markus thought as he attempted to finish off his Spanish homework amidst all the cheers, yells and general chatter of the Youth Center's café, otherwise known as Terra. Finishing off his drink, he pushed the glass towards the middle of the table and tried to concentrate on translating a paragraph, but was failing miserably. _Where's __Rosa_

"Hey Markus, where's Rosa?" At those words, Markus tore his attention away from his homework and looked up to see the owner of Terra, Ian Bremer standing over Markus with a slightly confused expression. Ian was a slightly balding man in his mid-forties, with brown hair and watery green eyes. "I've never seen one of you here without the other."

"To be honest, your guess is as good as mine," Markus said in reply. "I haven't seen her since school ended today. Tried her house but no one was there." That was a half-truth; the pink ranger had been found in front of Rosa's house. Given that there had been no commotion over the aliens known as Okomors, Markus had assumed that there was no one in the house. After all, you can't exactly ignore a fight between bat-like aliens and a power ranger.

Markus sighed as Ian walked off, presumably having seen someone else he knew. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Aneka, who had walked into Terra a few moments ago, being waylaid by a couple of guys who were standing around the pool table.

Aneka saw Markus and nodded slightly, bringing a hand up to her arm and signing 'she's okay' to Markus. He replied with a grateful but small smile and returned to working on his Spanish homework.

"Need any help?" the waitress asked a while later as she took Markus' empty glass away from him. "You've been staring at the same page ever since you got here."

"I'm fine," Markus muttered as he underlined a few words, then tapped the pen against the table.

The waitress laughed briefly. "You've got no clue, have you?"

"Nope," Markus said cheerfully, pushing his homework away and looking up at the waitress. "Haven't seen you here before, I take it you're new?" he added as he shoved his school books into his bag. He quickly looked out the window and frowned when he saw how dark it was. Surely he hadn't been in Terra that long, had he?

"Yup, just started here a few weeks ago. Name's Cursa." Markus raised an eyebrow. "Don't ask. The rest of my family have normal names, and I get named after the blinking line in a word processor." She brushed her blonde hair out of her face.

"I'm Markus. Do you go to Angel Grove high? I think I've seen you around."

Cursa smiled, "Yeah, I go to Angel Grove high, but I used to see you around the Angel Grove Dojo before you dropped out a few months ago." Cursa brushed her blonde hair out of her face again as she walked back to the counter, pausing and looking back at the entrance.

"Bit early for Halloween, isn't it?" someone at a nearby table remarked, and soon Markus joined the increasing number of people who were staring at Terra's front door.

What had drawn the crowd's attention had yellow eyes, graying skin and bat wings attached to their shoulder blades.

Okomors.

Markus let out a mental curse, briefly looking over to where Aneka was. She was still at the pool table, joking with her friends and sinking shot after shot. Although she seemed completely enthralled by the game her eyes flicked back to the doorway every so often.

_Explains why it was so dark outside,_ Markus thought as everyone, who seemed to have gotten over their initial shock, resumed what they had been doing previously. Now no longer the center of attention, the Okomors moved through Terra, any crowds they encountered gladly parting for the creatures.

Whether it was the fact that the gray skin looked a little too realistic for make-up, that the yellow tinge extended beyond their irises or that the wings looked naturally connected, not surgically, it didn't matter.

Everyone knew that their home planet wasn't Earth.

Everyone knew they were aliens.

Everyone was scared of them.

Well, everyone except the power rangers.

Had the Okomors appeared in Terra a few months ago, when Markus had first received his powers, he would have rushed over to fight them. Now, he stayed in his seat, waiting for either Aneka to initiate the attack, or for the Okomors to make the first move.

He didn't have long to wait.

ooooooooooooooo

Rosa groaned as her eyes flickered open; some genius had decided that sticking a bare light bulb right over where she was lying had been a perfect idea. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and slipped off, noting that she wasn't dressed in a hospital gown. So, wherever she was, it definitely wasn't a hospital.

"Where on earth are my shoes?" she muttered to herself as she paced the room, searching for the afore-mentioned item but with no success. What she did find was a small control panel, which looked a lot like the scanners people had in semi-futuristic movies.

"Doesn't look like I'm in Kansas anymore, so better head down the rabbit hole," Rosa said as she walked over to the control panel, pressing her hand against it. She yelped and stepped back slightly as the door slid open quickly, granting her full access to the central room.

"Guess everyone expected me to come to this party, 'cept for myself." Rosa cautiously skirted the debris which was littered all across the floor. That and the numerous open panels told her that someone had attempted to install something new, or to fix an established component, but had given up part-way through.

There was a large doorway on the other side of the room, slotted in to a space in the white stone which surrounded it. Control panels and monitors were sprinkled everywhere in the room, but what drew Rosa's attention was a small, practically non-descript watch and a small coin.

Rosa walked over to where it was lying on the console and picked it up. It seemed slightly thicker than a normal watch, and looked to have numerous buttons welded onto it. There was a small slot in the casing of the watch, just large enough to fit a quarter in, or in fact the coin which had been lying next to the watch.

"This," Rosa said as she slid the coin into the slot, "Is just getting weirder and weirder." Once the coin was secured in the watch, a small holographic projection of a cat appeared on top of the watch, right were the face was, and a computerized voice started speaking.

"DNA sequencing complete, ranger identified. Spirit ranger: five, spirit animal: cat, ranger color: pink, name of ranger: Rosa Barnsley, age of ranger: fifteen, known relatives: two brothers, Maxi, age nineteen and Zac, age thir–"

The voice had ceased talking, but not because Rosa had figured out how to stop the program or mute the sound. She had promptly dropped the watch when it started reeling off semi-personal details. Chuckling nervously to herself, she retrieved the watch, wondering if the 'personal' details would go as far as to reveal who she had kissed when she was nine years old.

"Spirit ranger five, are you there?" A second, more human voice was now speaking through the watch and, despite herself, Rosa nearly dropped the watch again.

"Um, spirit ranger five here," Rosa spoke into the watch, hoping that the button she was pressing down was the correct one. Knowing her luck, if she pressed the wrong one she'd get an electric shock or blow up the base or something equally bad.

"Spirit ranger five, are you there?" the voice repeated, sounding a little more urgent that it had a few moments ago. Rosa fumbled with the watch, pressing down each button in turn and waiting a few moments for a response.

"Spirit ranger five here," Rosa said for the fourth time, hoping that this time she had pressed the correct button.

"So, you finally worked out the controls then," the male voice said with a hint of humor.

"Spirit ranger one, this is no time to joke around!" a faint female voice said, and the male chuckled.

"Okay, fine. Spirit ranger five, we need your help in Terra, morph and get here ASAP." The communication was broken, leaving Rosa standing in the middle of the room for a few moments, in shock.

"How do I morph?"

ooooooooooooooo

Markus started slightly when he heard a faint computer voice reeling off information which could only have been for the pink spirit ranger. Him pausing for a few seconds allowed the nearest Okomor to slash him across the chest, but as he was wearing his ranger outfit, all he felt was a small scratch. Consequentially, Markus didn't hear the 'personal' information which was being reeled out by Rosa's morpher.

Markus stabbed the nearest Okomor through the heart with his sword. Before the Okomor could disintegrate into black smoke, Markus was already trying to frantically communicate with the pink ranger.

"Spirit ranger five, are you there?" Silence was his only answer, and Markus was torn between worry and trying to remind himself that the pink ranger had possibly no clue what any of the buttons on the watch actually did.

"Spirit ranger five, are you there?" Logical thinking didn't prevent Markus from worrying though. He grabbed the nearest Okomor's arm and swung it around, letting it go and watching it knock into three of its comrades.

"Spirit ranger five here," the pink ranger said finally, and Markus grinned underneath his helmet. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Aneka being ganged up on by four Okomors

"So, you finally worked out the controls then," Markus joked, spinning around and grabbing Aneka in his arms moments before she would have fallen to the ground. Although Markus couldn't see Aneka's face, he knew she was glaring at him.

"Spirit ranger one, this is no time to joke around!" Aneka said, disentangling herself from Markus' arms and delivering a high kick to the nearest Okomor. Markus just chuckled.

"Okay, fine. Spirit ranger five, we need your help in Terra, morph and get here ASAP." As soon as Markus had finished speaking, he cut off the communication and launched himself at the Okomors, cutting through a huge swathe of them. As Aneka did no longer have to worry about trying to keep both herself _and_ Markus safe, she too launched into a frenzied attack. At least, until she saw why the Okomors seemed to be shrinking back.

"Kyuuon," Aneka said as the humanoid lion came into view, snarling at the rangers.

"What? You know him?" Markus said in slight shock, looking over at Aneka, who nodded.

"One of Hachimen's lieutenants," she explained, drawing her daggers. "Don't back down from him!"


	3. Red, Pink and Yellow

**Corrections made following Hagar's advice.**

Chapter Three – Red, Pink and Yellow:

"Okay, okay, morpher, morpher," Rosa muttered to herself, staring at the buttons on the watch in the hope that at least one of them would have something important written on it. Unfortunately, whomever had created the watches made sure to keep the rangers in the dark as much as any random person who might come across said watch.

Giving up a logical approach, Rosa just started jabbing at the buttons which she hadn't touched when trying to contact whom she assumed to be the red spirit ranger. So far, nothing visible had happened and she was running out of time, not to mention buttons to press.

"Gah, stupid thing," Rosa muttered as she pressed the last button, and nothing happened. She slid down to the ground, clasping her head in her hands and trying to think. The last time she morphed had been when that cat had exploded into the pink smoke and she had breathed it in. It had been a spontaneous morphing, which did not help Rosa in the slightest.

"Great, the other spirit rangers are back in Terra getting slaughtered, and I'm sitting here thinking about a bloody stupid cat!"

"Morphing sequence activated." A flash of pink light later, and the pink spirit ranger was standing in Rosa's spot. She looked down at herself, fully morphed, and frowned underneath her helmet.

"Great, technology, can't live with it, can't survive without it," she muttered in annoyance. Now that she had morphed, Rosa noticed that her watch seemed to have morphed as well. It was now attached to her left wrist, and the buttons now had labels above them. Smiling in relief, Rosa pictured Terra, pressed the one marked 'teleport' and hoped that she wouldn't land in the North Pole.

ooooooooooooooo

Markus performed a stunt which he had thought before now to be impossible; he flew through the air. He landed heavily against the wall but, fortunately, it seemed to be holding. Markus got to his feet, albeit a little unsteadily, and drew his sword, out of what Aneka called morphing space, in a flash of red light.

Kyuuon looked relatively human, but less so than the Okomors. His face looked relatively normal with the exception of a lion's nose instead of a human's, and a golden mane surrounding his face. He was bare-chested with normal-looking arms, but his hands had sharp black claws, much like that of a lion's. He was wearing a pair of loose dark brown pants and from the openings at the bottom were a pair of lion-like paws, once again with black claws.

Kyuuon slashed one of his hands across Aneka's chest, knocking her back a few steps. Aneka recovered quickly, drawing her daggers and slashing Kyuuon across the face. His head snapped back, more in shock of the attack than in pain. Kyuuon recovered quickly and, with a short growl, clenched his hand into a fist and backhanded Aneka, sending her flying. She landed awkwardly in a pile of chairs, the legs twisted around and forming a semi-prison around her.

"Now you're just starting to annoy me," Markus said as he crept up behind Kyuuon, aiming to stab him in the back, quite literally. Kyuuon reached around behind him and grabbed Markus around his neck, squeezing hard. Markus gasped slightly, his air supply slowly being cut off.

"Ya know, you should really pick on someone your own size." Markus turned to look at who had spoken, and smiled when he saw that it was the pink ranger. "Of course," she continued, twirling one of her short swords in her hand, "There isn't anyone here like that, so I guess you'll just have to be a bully."

Kyuuon chuckled. "Ah, so there's finally a new pink ranger," he said, dropping Markus onto the floor none-too-gently. "Hachimen was wondering when you'd show up, he's been sensing your power for quite a while now."

The pink ranger stepped towards Markus, looking confused. "What are you talking about?" she asked, her short sword disappearing in a flash of pink light.

Kyuuon chuckled again. "I guess the yellow ranger hasn't quite told you everything yet. It's a shame; it's better fighting someone who knows the true terror of Hachimen."

"And it's better fighting someone–" Aneka stabbed Kyuuon in the back with one of her daggers– "who knows when not to turn their back on the enemy."

Kyuuon snarled and whirled around to attack Aneka. The pink ranger knelt down next to Markus; even he could sense how nervous she was.

"Are you all right?" the pink ranger asked Markus, and he nodded. "Good, now, how're we gonna get out of here?" she asked, pulling Markus up and helping him stand up as Aneka was slashed across her arm.

"My guess?" Markus asked rhetorically as he leaned on the pink ranger, but she nodded anyway. "We're not gonna be able to get out of here until Kyuuon leaves…or we're defeated."

"Great choice," the pink ranger said grimly, drawing her bow and arrows out of morphing space. She fixed an arrow on the bow, aimed, and took shot. The arrow landed just to the side of Kyuuon's shoulder blade. Roaring in pain, he swung blindly at Aneka, who ducked to avoid the blow, and turned to look at the pink ranger. Kyuuon's snarl turned into a snicker, causing the pink ranger to frown at him, although he couldn't see it.

"Well, it looks like my time is up. Be forewarned, we _will_ meet again, rangers." The pink ranger rushed forwards, her bow split into two small swords. However, when she took a swing at Kyuuon, she fell right through him as if he were a –

"Hologram," Aneka said, helping the pink ranger to stand up. "Don't worry, we all made that mistake when we first became rangers."

"Speak for yourself," Markus muttered, rotating his left arm. "I don't seem to remember you falling for that in any of our earlier fights."

"Well, maybe I've been a ranger longer than you have," Aneka said with a small, hidden smile. "Come on, back to base, we've got a lot of things to discuss." Markus and the pink ranger nodded, and all three of the rangers disappeared in a flash of red, pink and yellow light.

ooooooooooooooo

As soon as Aneka and Markus landed in the control room, they demorphed. Naturally, upon seeing who the red ranger was, the pink ranger started to stare.

"Mind telling me why you didn't explain this to me earlier?" the pink ranger said, and Markus looked at her in confusion.

"Err, mind filling me in on what's happening here?" Markus asked, turning his attention over to Aneka, who sighed in annoyance and walked over to the pink ranger. Aneka grabbed the pink ranger's arm and pressed what was evidently the 'demorph' button as, once the pink light had disappeared, Rosa was standing next to Aneka.

"You made my girlfriend into a ranger!" Markus practically hissed, rounding on Aneka. "I try my best to keep the fact that I'm the red spirit ranger secret, and you rope my girlfriend in as the pink ranger!"

Aneka sighed. "The coins choose the ranger, not me. If I had any choice in this matter, do you think I would have brought your girlfriend in as one of the rangers? In the team I was a part of before this, having a boyfriend and girlfriend together was just a–" Aneka shook her head. "Never mind, doesn't matter. But the fact still stands that I'd _never_ bring your girlfriend in if I could help it."

"Excuse me; the 'girlfriend' is right here and perfectly capable of hearing what you're saying." Rosa looked at Markus. "While it might be great that I know why you keep on disappearing, I never asked Aneka to make me a ranger. I never even knew her until just a few minutes ago."

Markus sighed, turning to look at the wall, not completely convinced. He folded his arms across his chest and stared at the wall for a few moments, before the stares of the pink and yellow rangers drew his attention back to them.

"What?" he said, sighing once more when neither ranger answered him. "Okay, fine, I believe you, Aneka. It doesn't mean that I'm happy with what's happened though," he added, looking at Rosa. "Is there any way you can give the powers to someone else?"

"Hey, hold on a minute, if you think you can ju–"

"Yes, but it's time-consuming, and also draining for the person involved." Aneka added, looking at Rosa briefly, "If the coin chose Rosa, then there's hardly anyone else better suited for the power."

"And what the hell is that supposed to mean?" Rosa spat, turning on her heels and glaring at Aneka. "Just 'cause I'm fifteen–"

"–I thought you were sixteen, but never mind–"

"–doesn't mean I'm incapable of fighting!"

"Rosa, I didn't mean–"

"Yeah, yeah, don't backtrack now. So, what, I'm a last-ditch attempt for the pink ranger powers? You think I'm inferior compared to you, that I've got no experience in fighting?" Rosa stepped closer to Aneka, the former seeming to tower over the latter, despite the latter being a good four inches taller.

"Rosa, just calm–"

"Calm! _You're _the one who's accusing me of being a weak, pathetic teenager not worthy to be given the pink ranger powers!" Rosa glared at Aneka, storming back towards the hospital wing, cursing when she stood on a screwdriver and remembering that she _still_ hadn't found her shoes.

"They're in a drawer underneath the bed you woke up in," Aneka said as the door to the hospital wing slammed shut, the breeze from it being felt all the way across the room. "That went well."

Markus raised his eyebrows. "Please tell me you're joking."

"I'm deadly serious," Aneka said as she bent down to retrieve a console cover. "The previous pink ranger wasn't nearly as calm; it took her almost two weeks to accept that she was the pink ranger and that it was her duty to help fight with us." Aneka looked around in an attempt to find the correct console the cover had come from. Giving up the search, she tossed the cover onto the nearest console instead.

"And Rosa yelling at you and saying that you implied that she wasn't worthy of having the pink ranger powers…?"

"The previous pink ranger thought it was some kind of high school prank, a form of gang hazing." Aneka smiled, picking up some stray wires. "If it was, it was a pretty pathetic idea. Hazings are supposed to test your loyalty and courage, not your deceptive skills. Look, I've gotta get to work on this, mind handing me those wires?"

"You speak as if you've been involved in this type of thing," Markus said, handing Aneka a bunch of loose wires and looking over at the hospital wing. "I guess I'd better go talk to her, hadn't I?"

"Might be best. Kyuuon now knows that there are three rangers, and if Rosa's not ready to comply with us as a team, that team might as well not exist." Aneka grabbed the wires Markus was holding and shoved him towards the hospital wing. "Go on, you're her boyfriend, she'd listen to you more than me."

"Wanna bet?" Markus muttered under his breath as he walked towards the hospital wing and knocked on the door. "Rosa? I'm coming in, 'kay?"

Markus waited for a few moments, then pressed his hand against the control panel. The doors slid open and revealed a pristine hospital environment; half a dozen beds lined up against one of the walls, x-rays and the like shoved up against the opposite wall. But no Rosa.

One of the windows on the slanted roof was open, causing a small piece of paper on one of the beds to flutter in the breeze. Markus walked over to the note and grabbed it, placing the stapler which had been weighing it down back where it belonged. The paper was covered in Rosa's scribbled handwriting, but Markus had seen it enough times to be able to decode it.

_Markus, _

_ It's Zac's birthday today and I forgot that we're going out to the cinema to celebrate. I'm still not pleased with what's happened, but as long as it wasn't intentional, I supposed I can deal with it._

_ See you at school tomorrow,_

_Rosa__ xx_

"Well, at least she's not _too_ annoyed with me," Markus said to himself, crumpling the note up and tossing it in the nearest bin. He walked out of the hospital wing and saw Aneka still trying to figure out the mess she had created on the console room floor.

"Need a hand?" Markus asked, trying to hide a grin as Aneka turned around, and nearly tripped over some loose wires.

"No, I'm fine, you go ahead. You need to sort things out with Rosa, don't you?" Markus didn't hide this smile, and quickly explained to Aneka what Rosa had written on the note.

"I'm gonna go over to her house briefly, see if she's all right. See you when the next emergency occurs," Markus added with a wink, and teleported out of the base.


	4. Angel of the Sky

**Edits made on Hagar's advice**  


Chapter Four – Angel of the Sky:

"I've told you, Markus, I'm fine," Rosa said, doing her best to block Markus' way in with her body.

"I just wanted to make sure," Markus said, alternating glances between Rosa and the door, trying to gauge the best way to force his way into the house.

"Look, I'm fine, no injuries whatsoever," Rosa said, pulling up the sleeves of her top as she spoke. "The same can't be said of you if you don't walk down that path and back towards your own house in five seconds."

"Five seconds? Aren't you being a little–?"

"Three, two–"

"All right, all right, I'm going, see you at school tomorrow," Markus said, turning around and waving over his shoulder as he walked down the garden path. Rosa watched him leave, waiting a few extra moments to make sure he was heading home and wasn't going to double back in order to spy on her.

Once Rosa was certain Markus had left, she closed the door and leaned her forehead against it, breathing deeply in an attempt to try and calm herself down. Becoming a ranger, fighting the Okomors, fighting Kyuuon _and_ finding out that Markus was a ranger too? Had that really all happened since school had finished earlier that day?

_DING-DONG_

Rosa bit back a yelp as the doorbell rang, sounding unnaturally loud as she was, technically, unnaturally close to the source of the sound. She quickly unlocked the door and opened it, a glare on hand if it happened to be Markus.

"Hey Rosey, how was school today?" her mom asked, enveloping Rosa in a death-hug, hitting Rosa's back with the shopping bags she was carrying. Rosa's mother had the exact same hair and eye color that her daughter had, and Rosa's mother often joked that they could pass for siblings. However, Rosa's mother had a fondness for skirts and silk which her daughter didn't, preferring to stay in cotton and demin. "I just saw Markus walking back home, he looked annoyed. Did you two have a fight?"

"No," Rosa managed to gasp as he mom was slowly crushing her windpipe. "Mom, can't…breathe…"

"Oh, sorry honey, I keep on forgetting." Rosa's mom chuckled to herself as she let go of her daughter and walked into the kitchen. "There's some more shopping in the back of the car, if you could get that out for me?"

Rubbing her neck, Rosa rolled her eyes and walked out of the door. She grabbed a couple of bags from the boot of the car and carried them into the house. As she did so, a small smile appeared on her lips.

_Save Terra from being destroyed by a humanoid lion, then help my mom carry the shopping in._

ooooooooooooooo

"Hey, Rosa, wake up," Danny muttered. Danny was one of Rosa's best friends and was currently attempting to jab Rosa discreetly in the ribs, trying to keep her awake. It was only first period English, and Rosa was already falling asleep at her desk.

"May I ask what you're doing, Mr. Smith?" Ms Taylor asked with a very pointed glare at the student she had addressed.

"Erm…would you believe me if I said nothing?" Danny said, trying to bluff his way through with what he thought was a winning smile. He might have gotten away with it if Rosa hadn't chosen that exact moment to yawn loudly.

"Miss Barnsley, dare I ask what it was you did last night which seems to have tired you out?" Ms Taylor asked, turning her attention from Danny to Rosa. Rosa blushed and tried to answer, but was interrupted by another yawn which just served to annoy Ms Taylor even more.

"All right," Ms Taylor said after a few moments of deliberation. "Miss Barnsley, Mr. Smith, if you can promise to not interrupt this class any more, you will not receive detention tonight. Am I understood?"

"Yes, miss," Danny said, while Rosa simply nodded, not trusting herself enough to not yawn while answering.

"Good," Ms Taylor said. "Now, let's continue where we left off. 1984 was written by a person called George Orwell, who also wrote the book Animal Farm, which was a par–"

ooooooooooooooo

"So," Danny said, picking through the various unappetizing items on his tray. "Mind telling me why you're so tired today?"

"It's nothing," Rosa muttered as she flicked her food across her plate with her fork, her nose barely inches away from the plate. "I just…didn't go to sleep early enough last night."

"I ain't buying that," Danny said, quickly exchanging his tray with Rosa's, who did nothing but glare at him. "There, see? Normally, if I tried to do that while you were awake, you would have dug that fork into my hand."

Rosa couldn't think of an adequate comeback, so she settled for sticking her tongue out at Danny instead. She looked down at what was now her tray, and shoved it away with a sigh.

"You had a fight with Markus?" Danny asked as Rosa rested her head in her hands, looking at something in the middle distance.

"No! Well, yeah, kinda…" Rosa sighed. "I can't tell you the specifics, but we just didn't agree on something and I exploded at him. I walked out, and we kinda made up afterwards."

"And is that why you're so tired?" Danny asked, feigning innocence, being rewarded for his curiosity with a hard slap on the shoulder. "What? Inquiring minds want to know."

"And inquiring minds won't get an answer to a question like that." Rosa tried to sound serious, but there was a hint of a smile on her face. "No, our family went out to the cinema last night, it was Zac's thirteenth birthday and so he got to choose where we went last night." Rosa rolled her eyes.

"Bad movie choice?" Danny asked, and Rosa nodded.

"Didn't even have a plotline as far as I could see. Urgh," Rosa looked at her watch. "Still ten minutes to go before class, and I'm as bored as hell."

Danny grinned, "Same here."

ooooooooooooooo

The teacher blew the whistle, indicating a foul. Rosa flicked her loose hair out of her face and grinned, running into an empty pot on the field.

Rosa's volleyball team was 9-5 up, with the first to thirteen points winning the set, but their opponents were quickly catching up; the last four points had all been scored by them.

"How're you doing?" Emily asked, a grin to match Rosa's on her face. "Ready to win?" Emily had blonde hair, gray eyes and an infectious smile.

Rosa's own smile widened. "You think we've got a chance?" She glanced up as the ball headed in her direction, knocking it back towards the net.

"'Course we do, we've only got five – oops, make that four points left to go." Emily looked over Rosa's shoulder as their team captain called for a time-out.

"What're you looking at?" Rosa turned around to have a look for herself. "Oh."

"What do you mean, 'oh'?" Emily said, folding her arms across her chest and pretending to look mortified. "He's _hot_."

"To you, maybe," Rosa said. "In case you've forgotten, _I've_ got a boyfriend."

"Yeah, but no one would blame you if you cheated on Markus with him." Emily mock-sighed as their team captain called them back to resume their volleyball game.

"Why don't you go over and ask him out?" Rosa asked as she tossed the ball over to Emily a few minutes later.

"A guy like that?" Emily scoffed as she tipped the ball over the net. "Wouldn't even look at me twice."

ooooooooooooooo

Orion ran a hand over his face and sighed in annoyance. Two girls over on the volleyball courts kept on looking at him, and presumably also giggling. He looked nothing like any of the famous actors girls normally drooled over, at least in Orion's mind. Maybe it was the 'tortured soul' vibes he gave off, but he hated it. With spiked brown hair and brown eyes, he probably looked the same as about twenty percent of the school, but the girls always seemed to be drawn to _him_.

"Hey, Williams, if you're going to daydream, don't do it on the track!" Orion's teacher yelled at him.

_Yeah, whatever,_ Orion thought to himself. He'd noticed that, while he'd been looking over at the girls, he'd fallen behind everyone else in his class. Speeding up, he easily overtook a small, not-built-to-be-marathon-runners gaggle of his classmates and quickly raced towards the front of the group.

Running was supposed to be a solitary event, at least in Orion's mind. Of course, that philosophy didn't work in Angel Grove High, where _everyone_ was supposed to run together. It grated on Orion's nerves to no end.

Orion's teacher blew the whistle, signaling the end of class. Grabbing his discarded sweater, Orion rushed back to the locker room, eager to leave the class and get back home where he could be on his own. Just how he liked it.

There was a small crowd standing at the door, someone evidently blocking it for some reason or another. Orion glanced up and sneered when he saw that the blockage was caused by one of the girls who had been looking at him earlier. Putting on a neutral expression, Orion 'politely' made his way through the crowd and started to walk towards the boys' locker rooms. 'Politely' meaning that he didn't get annoyed and pushed everyone out of his way, and presumably out of other peoples' way too.

He was almost at the boys' locker rooms when a brown-haired blur knocked into him. Acting on instinct, Orion whirled around and grabbed her elbow, preventing her from falling to the ground.

"Hey, you okay Rosa?"

"You okay?"

Both Emily and Orion, respectively, spoke at the same time. Orion glared at Emily slightly before pulling Rosa back onto her feet and letting go of her elbow.

"Yeah, sure, I'm fine, just wasn't looking where I was going."

_Wasn't that obvious?_ Orion thought.

"I'm Rose, this is my friend Emily," Rosa said as she extended a hand, which Orion just looked at.

"Next time, watch where you're going," he sniffed as he walked off, leaving Emily and Rosa looking at each other, stunned.

"Wonder what his problem was?" Emily asked, and Rosa shrugged.

"No idea, but he's always like that, you get used to it after a while," Aaron said, giving Rosa and Emily a lopsided grin, his gray eyes looking over at Orion's fast-disappearing figure. "Guy's a walking enigma, and snubs you at every turn. Either of you in any of his classes?"

Rosa shook her head. "We're sophomores, and since he's in the same class as you, he must be a senior, right?"

"Got it in one. Aaron Peterson, I'm on the school's hockey team."

"I thought I recognized you," Emily said, snapping her fingers. "You're team captain, aren't you?"

"Sorry," Rosa cut in before Aaron could say anything. "My friend's not exactly up to speed with all of the celebrities in our school."

"No problem," Aaron said, his grin widening. He glanced over his shoulder, and mock-sighed. A senior girl was standing in the doorway, a blonde eyebrow raised when she saw Aaron taking to Rosa and Emily. "Damn, gotta go, girlfriend's waiting."

"I know the feeling," Rosa said with a smile as Aaron walked off, waving at them as he left.

"Okay, forget the other guy, he's much better. Not as hot, but a better personality."

"Don't you ever think of anything else?" Rosa asked, turning her smile on Emily. Rosa glanced at her watch, and frowned.

"Nope, and I've gotta go too, meeting some friends in a while."

"Sure, see ya tomorrow," Rosa said distractedly. On the face of her watch were the power signatures of the current rangers. Normally the yellow and red bars (and pink since yesterday) were working at one hundred percent, and the blue and green bars were at zero.

But not any more.

The blue bar was now working at one hundred percent.


	5. Cat Fight

Chapter Five – Cat Fight:

"Are you sure about this?" Aneka's muffled voice echoed around the control room. She emerged from behind a console, her left hand carrying a bunch of multi-colored wires and her hair disheveled.

"Hundred percent," Rosa replied as she handed Aneka a pair of wire strippers. "The blue ranger's somewhere in Angel Grove High."

"Hmm." Aneka frowned as she began stripping the plastic off the ends of the wires. "Can you be more specific?"

"Sure," Rosa said, and Aneka looked up in surprise. "How about all the guys who have phys ed at the same time as me?"

Aneka sighed. "Well, that does help to a certain extent. I'll see if I can hack in to Angel Grove High's school system."

"D'you think you could bump up my grades too? I'm kinda flunking English." A glare from Aneka. "C'mon, I didn't mean it, I was only half-joking."

"Which means you were half-serious. If you want to improve your grades, work harder and/or get a better relationship with your teacher."

"Ms. Taylor? She's a complete and utter bi-" A series of short beeps sounded through the control room, drowning out Rosa's last word.

"Okomors," Aneka said. "Time to move out."

ooooooooooooooo

"So, you're telling me," Rosa said as she looked at the remains of the three Okomors disappeared into black smoke. "That everything registers at the same danger level, regardless of whether it's three Okomors or three hundred?"

"Yes," Aneka said as she powered down, Rosa following suit a few moments later. "I haven't had time to configure it properly. It used to be able to distinguish between danger levels, but when the oth-"

"But when what?" Rosa said, frowning in confusion. "What are you not telling me?"

"I'm telling you, it's nothing. It's just on a…need to know basis, and you don't really need to know about it." Aneka ran a hand through her hair, snagging it on a knot. She tugged her hand through it for a few seconds, pretending to remove the knot, but stopped when she saw that Rosa was still staring at her.

"Fine. A few years ago, when I was working with a different group of rangers, that alarm was configured to differentiate between different enemy strengths, and their danger to people. Of course, when the old base was destroyed, so was the alarm and pretty much everything else save for the morping coins and morphers. I've spent the past two years trying to get the base back to what it was like before, but I've been having trouble, as I'm the only one who's been working on it."

"Well…couldn't the others help you? The previous rangers?"

Aneka scowled. "There are no previous rangers. They were all killed."

"By who? How?"

"Hachimen, and like I said, you don't need to know how."

Rosa glared. "If Hachimen managed to kill the previous group then I _do_ need to know, if only so I can avoid getting killed."

"There were four rangers who fought against Hachimen when they were killed. I wouldn't start worrying unless we can't find a fifth ranger."

"Why didn't the old group have a fifth ranger?"

"They did; the fifth ranger decided that schoolwork was more important than trying to help stop Hachimen. After the battle, they disappeared, no one heard from them after that."

"You seem to know an awful lot about this," Rosa said with a frown, which Aneka replied to with a shrug.

"I was one of the techies who helped them. One of my friends was the previous red ranger. Come on," Aneka said, smiling. "You'd better get home, I'm certain you've got a lot of homework. And I know what Ms. Taylor is like, she used to be my English teacher too. Sophmore year, right?" Rosa nodded. "Try not to get her started too much on the seemingly-utopian world in 1984; that's all she'd talk about for the rest of the semester."

ooooooooooooooo

_Swish._ The basketball flew through the basket, not touching the rim. Rosa waited for a few moments to see where the ball would roll to before walking over to reclaim it. Frowning, she flicked the wrist her morpher was situated on before taking it off and half-placing, half-throwing it on a spot underneath and just to the left of the basketball basket.

Rosa stood in the middle of the driveway, idly dribbling the ball in one spot. "What is Aneka hiding from me?" she mused as she grabbed the ball, spun around one-eighty degrees and shot another perfect basket. This time, when the ball started bouncing and rolling across the front of the garage door, Rosa ignored it.

"Why'd the other rangers let normal people know who they were?" Rosa stuck her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. "It makes no _sense_. They're trying to _hide_, why else would Markus have hidden who he was?"

"You're a smart one, aren't you?" Kyuuon sneered behind Rosa. The latter spun around, arms raised and with a sneer on her face.

"What're you doing here?" Rosa glanced back at her abandoned morpher.

"Attacking you, why do you think I'm here?" Kyuuon replied with a toothy grin. "And you've got two options: try and fight me unmorphed, or risk turning your back on me and taking your morpher in order to fight me as a ranger."

Rosa frowned. "If you're so intent on attacking me, why haven't you already?"

Kyuuon rested his chin in one of his clawed hands. "Hmm, good question, maybe I'm not here to fight you. Not initially anyway."

"Then why _are_ you here?"

"Do you really believe everything Aneka told you earlier, after the Okomor attack? Let me answer that for you: no, you don't believe her." Kyuuon smiled once more, holding his hand out palm-up and repeatedly retracting and extending his claws. "She's not telling you the whole truth, and you know it. You just don't know what the truth is."

"Shut up!" Rosa yelled. "Aneka doesn't have a reason to hide anything from me, from any of the other rangers! She doesn't need to protect us from what's going to happen!"

"And what makes you so certain that it's you or Markus that she's trying to protect? She informs you about everything else, doesn't she?"

"Well –" Whatever Rosa was going to say was cut off by a hiss of pain. Before Rosa had had time to react, Kyuuon had closed the space between them, and sliced across her bicep.

On instinct, Rosa brought up a leg and kicked Kyuuon in the arm, trying to twist her uninjured arm out of his grip as well. When that didn't work, she kicked the back of Kyuuon's knees with the same leg. Kyuuon didn't fall to the ground, but he did slump slightly, allowing Rosa to pull her hand free.

A few drops of blood from her new wrist wound dropped onto the concrete before the wound healed itself. Twisting her face into an expression of annoyance, Rosa delivered a high kick to Kyuuon's jaw, snapping his head back. She followed up with a kick to the chest which knocked him to the ground.

"One of Hachimen's lieutenants?" Rosa hissed, standing over Kyuuon as he wiped the blood and spittle from around his mouth with a clawed hand. "You're _pathetic_!" Rosa aimed a punch at Kyuuon's left cheek, but he grabbed her hand before it even came close.

"Do you want to test that theory?" Kyuuon snarled as he threw Rosa onto a section of the driveway above his head. Kyuuon leapt to his feet and stood over Rosa, who now had a few small scrapes along her bare arms.

"Yeah, I would," Rosa said, grinning up at Kyuuon. She scissor-kicked his feet out from underneath him and tried to roll out of the way. She had misjudged, and so a 250+ pound human/lion hybrid ended up landing on her feet and the lower part of her calves.

Kyuuon chuckled as he got to his feet, grabbing Rosa's injured wrist and hauling her onto her feet too. Rosa glared at Kyuuon, trying to repeat her last trick on him. Instead, he used her own trick against her when she was only standing on one leg, ensuring that she would fall to the ground.

"I didn't really come here to fight," Kyuuon said as he pinned one of Rosa's legs to the ground.

"Oh yeah?" Rosa said, trying her best to buck Kyuuon's foot off her own. "You coulda fooled me with that. You're the one who attacked first."

"That _is_ true," Kyuuon said, drawing his claws over Rosa's wrist wound, which was starting to heal. She hissed as the wounds opened once again, dropping a couple more drops of blood onto the concrete. "I'll refine my earlier statement then. I didn't come here for a _proper_ fight, I wanted to test your abilities as a ranger. For some reason, Hachimen is very interested in your abilities."

"Why? I'm not the best fighter in the team, I'm not even the best in my karate class."

"You should know that _fighting_ does not equal _ability_." Kyuuon let got of Rosa's wrist which, now free of Kyuuon's claws, was able to start healing. "You could be the best fighter in the world, and yet if you continue to push through your fights with strength, there will be someone who could turn your fighting strength against you."

"…Yeah, that makes sense," Rosa said with very little conviction, still trying to get her foot out from underneath Kyuuon's.

"Look at it this way: you either fight with no consequence of your actions, only brute force, or you fight with intelligence, anticipating moves and using them against your enemy." Kyuuon stood off Rosa's foot, and she scrambled to her feet, albeit a little clumsily. "You may not have be the best fighter in your class, nor have the best abilities, but you're learning quickly, and that makes you dangerous to Hachimen."

"Better believe I am," Rosa said. She dived under Kyuuon's left arm and dashed towards where she had left her morpher, covering the distance within seconds. "Now how about a real fight? Spirit Cat!" A flash of pink light, and Rosa stood as a ranger in front of Kyuuon.

Kyuuon smiled. "You see what I was talking about? That was the type of ability I was talking about. Someone who just ploughed ahead in fighting would have continued unmorphed. However, like I said before, I just came here to warn you, a…an information swap, if you will. Of course, seeing as I hold most of the cards–"

"What information swap? You work for Hachimen, why would you give us information which would probably hurt you later on?"

Kyuuon sighed. "Aneka's not telling you the whole truth, that we've agreed on. What she's not telling you, however, would probably have a more disastrous effect on your team when you finally face Hachimen than if I didn't tell you anything at all. It would leave you under-prepared, and I hate fighting people who don't know everything that they could."

"Okay, fine, you just lost me on that last part," Rosa said, just before her communicator started beeping. She looked down at it and smiled. "Looks like we've got company."

"I hate to be an uncooperative host, but I'm afraid that's also my signal to leave." Kyuuon bowed at Rosa, before fading into a hologram. Before the hologram had entirely disappeared, however, Kyuuon gave Rosa a small wink.

ooooooooooooooo

"If Kyuuon was there a while, why didn't you call the base?" Markus asked once he and Rosa were back in the control room of the base. They had both demorped and were standing in between two rows of half-repaired computers. "Are you sure your arms are all right?"

Rosa glanced down at the afore-mentioned appendages. "I'll live, just means I'll have to wear a jacket tomorrow, otherwise people would start thinking I've taken up cutting." She frowned. "Shouldn't these have healed by now? I mean, the injuries I got from my spirit animal–"

"Were to test if you _were_ the person it was looking for. On a normal person or the wrong ranger, the injury would have remained there until it healed naturally. With the correct ranger, it heals so fast as to be almost instantaneous." Markus smiled. "I wouldn't worry too much, those injuries will probably have gone by tomorrow night."

"They'd better," Rosa said. "I've got phys ed in two days, and I don't want to be parading these cuts around like war wounds."

"They _are_ war wounds, Rosa," Markus said with another smile. "You want me to clean them up?"

"I'll live," Rosa said, closing the distance between them and giving Markus a kiss. "See ya at school tomorrow."


	6. The Blue Hunter

I apologize for the slight delay in posting this chapter. I am, for the moment, going home every weekend and this weekened my internet connection decided to just not work, thus I had to wait until I got back to my dorm to post this.

Chapter Six – The Blue Hunter:

"So, you think we're stuck between two people who could be the blue ranger?" Markus asked two days later as he and Rosa walked to school. "How will you know if you're right?"

Rosa shrugged. "I guess I won't until we find 'em. However, seeing as they're both possible blue ranger material, Aneka can follow them, see if either of them pick up the blue ranger powers." Rosa made a face. "How're we gonna hide the fact that there's a crocodile wandering around Angel Grove?"

"We won't," Markus said with confidence and a grin. "The spirit animals only reveal themselves to a few people, those which have the potential to be the ranger. Of those few, one is chosen to be the ranger."

"So, you're saying that we could, potentially, have _both_ these guys see the spirit animal and yet neither could be the ranger we're looking for?"

"Yep," Markus said with another grin. "Annoying as hell, isn't it?"

"I'll say," Rosa muttered as they walked through the front doors, effectively ending the conversation. "I've gotta head off to Chem class, I'll see you after school."

"Sure, have fun," Markus said, kissing Rosa.

"Oh, get a room, you two!" someone yelled, and Markus just chuckled.

"You're telling me you haven't seen worse?" Markus yelled back. "Bye," he said to Rosa, before walking off to his first class.

ooooooooooooooo

"And if you add chemical X to chemical Y, you make chemical Z!"

Okay, the teacher didn't say those exact words, but Rosa was too bored to concentrate on what he was really saying. Chemistry, in her mind, was a boring subject that couldn't be livened up by a few explosions and what-not. Unfortunately, 'health and safety' prevented her class, and numerous others, from doing anything resembling interesting, and miles away from being exciting.

Sighing, Rosa cupped her chin in her hands and started drawing in the margin of her Chemistry notes, completely blanking out what her teacher was saying. It wasn't like she couldn't get the notes from Evan after class anyway.

"Rosa, mind telling me what this is, and why people should be careful when handling it?" Rosa jerked in her seat and blanched, realizing that the teacher had asked a question and she had been staring off into space, yet again.

"Erm…Hydrogen Chloride?" Rosa offered with a nervous grin. The teacher just sighed and moved on to ask someone else the same question. Luckily for Rosa, over half her class had the same reaction when asked a question, and it didn't happen very often to her anyway. Once or twice a fortnight, maybe, but not every lesson like some people.

_How long does this class go on for anyway?_ Rosa thought to herself, sneaking a look at her morpher which, surprisingly, had a built-in clock in it. There were still twenty minutes of the lesson left and, seeing as Rosa's teacher probably wasn't going to be doing anything interesting in those last few minutes, she went back to doodling.

"Hey, Evan!" Rosa called out twenty minutes later, once the class had been dismissed. "Can I borrow your notes from the last twenty minutes?"

Evan had closed-cropped brown hair and eyes which were very close to being called yellow. He looked at Rosa skeptically before digging through his file and handing Rosa a couple of sheets of notes.

"You should really start paying attention in class," he muttered as Rosa took the papers gratefully. "What were you doing, doodling again?"

Rosa blushed slightly. "Yeah, it's just that Mr. Parkinson doesn't seem to have any enthusiasm for the class."

"In other words, he bores you to death," Evan said, a small smile appearing on his face. Make sure you give me those notes back next class though."

"Will do," Rosa said, stuffing the paper into her own bag and hurrying to her next class.

ooooooooooooooo

"Hey, Rosa, right? What's the rush?" Aaron asked with a grin as the afore-mentioned rushed past him from the locker rooms.

"Sorry Aaron," Rosa called over her shoulder. "I'm gonna be late for class if I don't hurry up."

"Should get here earlier," Orion muttered as he too walked past Aaron, a scowl on the former's face as he did so. "What is the _point_ in this?"

"Fun, exercise, trying to keep us healthy?" Aaron offered, but Orion's scowl just deepened.

"I meant running in a group. All it does is annoy the better runners, and humiliate the worse." Orion tied his sweater around his waist and strolled off, leaving Aaron on his own.

"Well, thanks," Aaron muttered sarcastically as he followed Orion.

ooooooooooooooo

"This is getting us nowhere," Rosa complained, sitting on the edge of one of the consoles. "Why is it taking so long for the coin to react?"

"Because there's more than one possible blue ranger. When the coin detected your presence, it managed to find you within a matter of hours, simply because you were the only person with the right energy signature, as it were. I need to get there," Aneka added, and Rosa slipped off the console she had been sitting on.

"Well, none of the guys I've talked to have mentioned seeing an escaped animal anywhere, so I doubt it's any of them."

Aneka smiled, lifting up the console cover. "Are you so sure of that? My spirit animal is a leopard, yours is a cat. A leopard someone would notice, a cat they wouldn't. Or," she added, ripping out a bunch of wires and replugging them into different positions, "a cat would be noticed, but not as much as a leopard."

"A leopard would be 'quick, call animal patrol' whereas a cat would be 'eh, just a stray', right?" Rosa guessed, and Aneka nodded. However, that motion was a bit pointless seeing as her head was out of Rosa's sight. "Can't you tell what the animal they're seeing is?"

"Nope," Aneka said, coming up for air and looking around for a pair of pliers. "I'll only know when they've morphed, which could be hours or days from now." Aneka stuck her head back into the console, and Rosa heard the sound of _something_ being ripped apart. "We'd then have the task of finding them, and trying to convince them that it's not a hallucination–"

"In other words, it could potentially be a heck of a long time before we find out who the blue ranger is?"

"Precisely."

"…I'm gonna head home, call me if you find anything useful."

"Even at three o'clock in the morning?" Aneka said, and Rosa could hear the smile in her voice.

"You do that, and you won't have to worry about Kyuuon or Hachimen or another of his lieutenants killing you, 'cause I'd've already done that." Rosa glared at Aneka, or rather the console she was working on, and teleported back home.

ooooooooooooooo

The thumping bass line from a rock song shook Rosa's house as it was so heavy and the song so loud. Sitting at her desk, Rosa's head was nodding along in time with the music as she tried to copy down Evan's notes. Annoyingly enough for her, she occasionally lost concentration and managed to copy down some of the song lyrics instead of the Chemistry classwork.

"Hey, Rosa!" a blond-haired, brown eyed boy yelled as he poked his head around Rosa's door. "Can you turn that music down!" Rosa didn't hear him; her head kept nodding along to the music. "Rosa! God," the boy muttered, walking into the room, grabbing the stereo remote and switching it off. The effect was almost instant.

"What was that for, Zac?" Rosa snapped, glaring at her younger brother as he walked over to where she was sitting.

"Music was too loud," Zac said. Rosa tried to snatch the remote out of his hands, but he just held the remote higher, a taunting smile on his face.

"Like you don't have it louder," Rosa muttered in annoyance, standing up and trying to take the remote back that way. Zac simply leaned backwards and passed the remote to his other hand. Rosa glimpsed something out of the corner of her eyes, and looked out of the window.

"Yeah, but not when other people are trying to do homework," Zac said, frowning when he saw that Rosa's attention wasn't focused on him. "Hey, what're you looking at?"

"Nothing," Rosa said, quickly turning her head back around and grabbing her remote back. "Now, get out of my room. _Knock_ before you enter next time."

"You didn't answer _this_ time."

"If I don't answer, it means don't bother me. Now, _get out_!"

"Fine, I'm going," Zac said, walking out of Rosa's room. "And don't put the music on too loud again!"

"Wouldn't dream of it," Rosa muttered under her breath. She closed her door and opened up a communications channel between her watch and Aneka's base. "Aneka? I think I've just found the blue ranger…"

ooooooooooooooo

"You have _got_ to be kidding me, how come this wasn't on the news."

The cause of this annoyance? A giant, lumbering gorilla wandering around the back-alleys of Angel Grove, exactly where a certain spiky-haired teen had been running. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, debating about whether or not to use his cell to notify someone that there was a potential escaped creature on the loose.

"Hey, King Kong, why don't you head back home?" he yelled to the gorilla, whom looked at him with an expression of boredom, and simply went back to rummaging through the dumpsters.

"Sheesh, animals are worse than people when it comes to ignoring you," the teen said, picking up a stone and throwing it at the gorilla. The stone landed wide of its mark, plinking against the wall behind the gorilla. Not to be deterred, another stone was picked up and thrown at the gorilla.

"…Ya know, this is a really pathetic joke to play on someone," he said, watching as the stone sailed right through the gorilla, hitting the wall and bouncing back through the gorilla again.

The gorilla turned to glare at the teenager, apparently having felt that stone hit. Withdrawing its hands and head from inside the dumpster, it swaggered over and glared at the stone-thrower.

With no warning, the gorilla grabbed the teenager's hand in its own, and began to crush it. The teenager barely had time to yell out in pain as his bones broke, for when the gorilla stopped crushing, it held the teen's hand in such a way that, as the bones healed rapidly, they were kept in position.

"What the f–" the teenager was knocked to the ground, despite not being hit, and the blue mist, which the gorilla had exploded into, was breathed in by him. A few seconds later, the blue ranger was sitting on the ground, a look of amazement underneath his helmet.

"Well," he said. "That was unexpected." He glanced up as a shadow fell across the path in front of him. "Gorilla lance!" Before the weapon had fully appeared in his hands, the blue ranger was already on his feet, the tip of the lance pressed against the intruder's throat.

"Oh, it's you," the blue ranger said neutrally.

"Whoa, hey, take it easy, friend here!" Rosa said, beginning to panic. _Now I know how Markus felt._ "Can we _not_ point sharp pointy objects at other people. Thanks," she added as the blue ranger removed the lance, watching it disappear in a flash of blue light. She smiled. "Guess this means you're the blue ranger."

"What would you know about that?" the blue ranger said, beginning to get confused. Rosa smiled, and pressed a button on her watch. A few seconds, and certain words later, the pink ranger stood in Rosa's place.

"This day is just getting worse and worse," the blue ranger muttered.


	7. Bonding

**Note:** I'm having slight difficulties in writing chapter nine, so there might be a slight delay between the posting of chapter eight and chapter nine. I'm hoping this doesn't happen, but if it does, you'll know what's gone wrong.

Chapter Seven – Bonding:

"You know, there is no challenge in playing pool against you whatsoever," Markus said as he watched Aneka pot yet another ball.

"Why's that?" Aneka said as she walked around the table and tried to line up another shot. She drew the cue back before pushing it forwards, the momentum passing to the white ball, and then to a purple-striped ball, which subsequently rolled into the center pocket.

"Because no matter what I do, even break, you always managed to sink practically every shot." Markus sighed. "How many straight sinks was that? Four?"

"Six," Aneka corrected with a slight smirk. "What's the matter, can't keep up?"

"How on earth do you manage to do this?" Markus said, and Aneka's smile grew even wider.

"This is how –" another ball was sunk "– I pay my bar tabs. Argument erupts about who's supposed to pay for the drinks, drop in a few quarters for a pool game. Loser pays for the drinks." Aneka stood up, surveying the pool table. "It's practically how I'm managing to pay my way through college."

Markus looked confused. "What, stealing other people's money?"

"Nope," Aneka said, sinking her eighth shot. "Not spending hundreds of dollars on drinks."

"Now, unless the law's been changed, don't you need to be twenty-one to drink alcohol?"

"Who do you think keeps the fake ID industry in business?" Aneka said with a wink, looking at the pool table again. "Do you want to concede?"

Markus sighed. "Well, considering you've only got the eight ball to pocket, I suppose there's no point in me continuing."

"You never know," Aneka said, sinking the afore-mentioned ball. "I could have missed."

"With the way you sunk the others? Not likely," Markus said, watching as Aneka rolled the remaining balls into one of the top pockets. "How long have you been at university for?"

"This is my second year," Aneka said, lying her cue on the top of the table, Markus following suit. "Plenty of time to practice my pool skills."

"As I've seen," Markus said, walking out of the pool area and into the main section of Terra, Aneka following. "So, just out of interest, how many games have you lost?" Markus asked as they sat down at a table.

"Definitely not as many as I've won. I'd probably say…I loose about one game in fifty, and that's usually because they weren't so intoxicated as to be unable to see where the white ball was."

"You're kidding me."

"Nope, one hundred percent serious. At first I thought he was colorblind, then his friend admitted that he had had something in the region of ten drinks that night." Aneka smiled. "Even when he did manage to find the right ball, he kept on scraping the felt. Eventually, he was ordered to pay for repairs and tossed out of the club. I don't think he's been back since."

"Hey, what can I – oh, hey Markus, haven't seen you in a couple of days," Cursa said. She was wearing jeans and a purple tank top, an unbuttoned blue shirt with the Terra logo over the top of that, accompanied by black boots.

"I don't always come here after school," Markus said. "I'll have a coke."

"Just get me a water please," Aneka said, turning back to look at Markus when he frowned at her. "What? It's very dusty back at base, and I've been stuck there for a good few hours today."

"Don't you have college to go to?" Markus said.

Aneka tapped her watch in reply. "Instant teleportation, remember? Of course, the range isn't such that you could teleport over to Europe, but it'd definitely get you from here to Caltech. What…?" Aneka looked down at her watch in surprise as it started beeping. "I swear I didn't do anything," she said, pressing a couple of buttons. "It's a message, I need to disappear for a few."

"I'll cover for you if needs be," Markus said. Aneka stood up and walked towards the bathroom. Almost at the same instant, Cursa walked over, albeit minus their drinks, which were still being made.

"So, who's your friend?" Cursa asked, placing the drinks on the table and grabbing an extra chair to sit on.

"Aneka? Oh, just a friend of my brother's, they're both in the same major in Caltech," Markus lied quickly, glancing over his shoulder to see Aneka walking briskly back to their table.

"I'd better go get your drinks," Cursa said, leaping up from her seat and hurrying over to the bar section, slipping slightly on the tiles.

"What's wrong?" Markus asked as Aneka sat down, watching as she started to fiddle with her watch. "What was the message about?"

"Rosa's found the new blue ranger," Aneka said, leaning her elbows on the table. "Gorilla spirit, turns out he nearly beheaded Rosa. What?" Aneka added as she saw Markus smiling.

"Same thing happened when I found Rosa after she'd morphed. If we're not careful, one of us is going to really be beheaded soon."

ooooooooooooooo

"So, what's your name?" Rosa asked, trying to be civil. Unfortunately, despite her best efforts, the blue ranger was being extremely silent and hadn't even demorphed, unlike her. "C'mon, you can't hide in your suit forever."

"Do you really want to bet on that?" the blue ranger said haughtily, and Rosa smiled.

"Orion, right?" she said, and her grin grew even wider when Orion turned to glare at her. Well, she assumed it was a glare as his face was still hidden behind the mask, but he had turned his head around and was now staring at her. That was a glare in Rosa's book.

"You're that idiotic kid who wasn't looking where she was going, right?" Orion said, and Rosa began to fume. _Kid?__ I'm only a few years younger than him!_

"My name's Rosa, if you'd care to remember it," Rosa snapped, turning around and beginning to walk away. "I hope the yellow ranger knows how to transfer ranger powers from an annoying bastard to someone who'd actually fit in with the team." Rosa growled as Orion grabbed her elbow, almost making her fall to her knees with the force he'd exerted.

"There's more of you?" Orion asked, and Rosa nodded her head sharply. "How many?"

"Just two more, the red and yellow rangers. I called 'em earlier, they should get here soon." Rosa sighed, silently adding _I hope_ to the end of the sentence.

ooooooooooooooo

"Great focus," Markus muttered to Aneka after she hurriedly apologized to the person she'd nearly ran over in her haste to get out of Terra. "Mind explaining why we're not teleporting directly out of Terra?"

"Because," Aneka said, ducking around a corner and looking out for people, "we can't just disappear from Terra. Ian and that new kid would notice, for starters. It's better that we actually leave and then teleport away, raises less suspicion." Aneka raised her watch arm up and frowned for a moment before teleporting away.

"Whatever you say," Markus said, following Aneka's lead.

ooooooooooooooo

"Where's that accent from?" Rosa asked Orion. She'd managed to get him to demorph and, right now, he was leaning against a wall while she was sitting rather precariously on a dumpster. "Didn't recognize it the other day, but you didn't exactly speak much then."

"Texan, Port Charles if you want to be specific."

"…Never heard of it," Rosa confessed, swinging her legs so that her heels began to thump against the dumpster. "Why'd you move?"

"My aunt got a new job, meant she has to move from Port Charles to Angel Grove to take it." Orion shrugged. "And so I end up here."

"Very interesting," Kyuuon said with a mock-yawn, walking into the alleyway. He turned to look at Orion and snarled. "I never thought that the orphan would become the blue ranger, but then they do say that life is full of surprises."

"Not you again," Rosa said, groaning and pressing a hand against her forehead. "What, do you constantly circle Angel Grove in the hopes of finding a ranger or two defenseless and on their own?"

Kyuuon smiled, baring his fangs. "I don't need to; you rangers have such strong energy patterns that even an energy finder who has the most rudimentary abilities would be able to find you wherever you were."

Rosa mock-yawned. "Are you gonna stand there chatting the whole time again, or are you gonna initiate a fight?"

"I would have thought you had learned not to rush things from our last battle."

"Yeah, this is all very interesting, but who the hell are you?" Kyuuon looked at Orion as he spoke, and the former let out an irritated sigh.

"I would have trusted, pink ranger, that you would have informed the newest addition to your team about the major threats he would be encountering once you found them." Kyuuon studied Orion, before speaking again. "I am Kyuuon, one of Hachimen's few lieutenants. Naturally, an introduction linking me to someone I doubt even the yellow ranger would remember is hardly interesting, so I propose something slightly more motivating." At that, Kyuuon drew a feather out of nowhere, threw it into the air, watched it split into a dozen or more Okomors, and teleported away from the scene, all in under fifteen seconds.

"First fight, Blue Gorilla," Rosa said, pressing a hand against her morpher. Before she actually morphed, she threw a grin at Orion. "Ready?"

Orion didn't say anything, instead settling for nodding and looking around. Unsurprisingly, as he hadn't had the obligatory trip to the ranger's base, he didn't have either a morpher or a morphing coin. What Orion said when he realized that…can't be repeated.

"How many languages was that?" Rosa asked, quickly morphing. "Never mind, I don't think I _want_ to know." Rosa drew her bow and began firing it, turning the nearest Okomor into a hybrid hedgebat before it exploded into black smoke. Reloading her bow, Rosa panned it across the remaining Okomors, almost daring them to try and get closer.

Orion just looked at Rosa. "Three languages, and don't you think it'll be a bit suspicious is people see a ranger and a non-ranger fighting together? Then they might, oh, I don't know, think that I'm a ranger too?"

"'Course they will, but you're not going to fight, you're going to go home."

"Look, I'm not a little kid, I know how to fight."

"Sure, you might know, but I'm not demorphing any time soon, so unless _you_ want to be revealed as a ranger, _you'd_ better get out of here, pronto." Rosa broke her bow in half, but before Orion could respond and ask why she was breaking it, Rosa was already slashing her way through the throng of Okomors. Rosa managed to get in a few good, quick hits, turning a couple into smoke before being knocked back by the rest.

"All right," Rosa said a few minutes later, demorphing and wiping spittle from the corner of her mouth. One of the Okomors had thrown her against the wall, and though the morphing suit had protected her back, it hurt like hell to her. Orion had stubbornly refused to leave, and was doing nothing except lean against the wall with a smirk on his face.

"Give up yet?" he said as Rosa's twin daggers disappeared in a flash of pink light. Rosa simply glared at him, gave him a rude gesture, and teleported away. "Well thanks," Orion said sarcastically, sneering at the place where Rosa had been standing moments before.

_Now,_ Orion thought to himself, as he scanned the group of Okomors in front of him. _How the hell am I going to beat them?_


	8. Missing Piece

Chapter Eight – Missing Piece:

Orion, faced with a large number of Okomors, decided that a strategic withdrawal would give him an increased chance of fighting off the next group of Okomors, whenever they decided to show up. He masterfully and quickly denied the Okomors their chance of fighting a lone, unmorphed power ranger. He hightailed it back to his house at top speed.

Basically, he ran away like a coward.

Finding his way back to his house, he slammed the door shut behind him and locked it, glad that his aunt wasn't home to wonder why he was acting so strangely. Also fortunately was the fact that Okomors, despite having human-like hands, had no idea how to open what was, to them, a complex mechanism like Orion's front door. Instead, they fluttered to the ground, a group of about half a dozen standing on the path leading to the door, staring at it inquisitively or chirping to their neighbors.

Orion walked round to the living room, which had a front-facing window, and discreetly looked out at the creatures cluttering up the neighborhood. The front one, with a scar diagonally across its nose, was the leader and was trying to open the door by simply clasping the door handle and alternating between pushing and pulling it, succeeding in only shaking the door. Eventually, they gave up and flew off, growing smaller in size until they were specks in the sky, then disappearing altogether. Breathing a sigh of relief, Orion unlocked the door and walked out.

"Running away has got to be one of the best strategies," an unfamiliar male voice said, and Orion looked around to see the red ranger with his arms folded. "It allows you to get away without injury, instead injuring others who might be simply bystanders."

"I knew what I was doing," Orion said, turning his back to the red ranger and beginning to walk off. He got as far as the front gate before stopping and turning to face the ranger. "I'm not joining."

"And why would that be?"

"I work alone."

The red ranger shrugged. "You can do that easily as a ranger. You'd just need to call us up whenever you get in over your head."

"I'm not going to get in over my head. I'm _not_ joining."

"Don't have a choice, buddy. Once you're chosen, you're chosen."

"And you thought it'd be fun to choose me?"

"Nope." The red ranger demorphed, revealing himself to be Markus, and held his hand out, palm up. In Markus' hand sat a blue-tinted coin, the outline of a gorilla raised just slightly on the surface. "The coin chose you."

"…You're kidding me," Orion said, and Markus shook his head. "How can an inanimate object select someone to become a ranger?"

"Through magic. You'd better take this, or Aneka will give me hell for not being able to convince you, and she's got a killer glare." Markus mock-shivered, and Orion rolled his eyes. "Come on, at least give it a chance."

"All right, fine, but you'd better find a way to get rid of these powers, 'cause this is only going to be short-term, understand?"

"Got it," Markus said with a smile as he handed the coin and spare morpher to Orion. "Press the third button on the left, and think the words 'control room'. You'll be there in no time." Markus' smile grew wider and he disappeared in a flash of red light. Orion shook his head, and followed.

ooooooooooooooo

"Glad to see you here," Rosa commented as Orion appeared in the command center, a moment or so behind Markus. "So are you –"

"I'm not going to be staying," Orion said briskly, cutting Rosa off. He looked around at the command center, clearly not impressed, and turned to look at Markus, completely ignoring Rosa. "What were those things that attacked me?"

"They're called Okomors, foot soldiers basically. They're supposed to work for Hachimen, but I've never seen him, so…" Markus trailed off, giving a half-hearted shrug to Orion as he finished speaking. "Could still be working under Hachimen, or someone could have bought his army."

"The Okomors have a biological program implanted into them when they're created; no one except Hachimen and his lieutenants and soldiers can control them." Aneka walked into the control room, wiping her hands on a dirty rag. "The only way Okomors would be controlled by someone other than Hachimen would be if Hachimen is dead."

"Kyuuon's mentioned Hachimen at least once," Rosa said, and Aneka nodded. "So…would he mention Hachimen to make us suspect that he's alive?"

"I honestly don't know. Most of the stuff I know is mainly based on hearsay I heard two years ago, so I could be completely wrong." Aneka looked at Orion cautiously, then moved onto a different subject. "I've found the green ranger."

"Oh, that's just what we need, another ranger with an attitude problem," Rosa muttered under her breath. Judging from the glare Orion gave her, he had definitely heard her.

"Do you know who he is?" Markus asked, and Aneka shook her head.

"All I know is that it's someone I've been in close proximity to for the –"

"Define 'close'," Orion said.

"Hmm, perhaps two meters or so. Someone whom I've been in close proximity to for the past three hours is the next ranger."

Rosa looked confused. "Well, you haven't been in close proximity to anyone, have you?" Aneka looked sheepish, and glanced over at Markus.

"Unless you count practically everyone in Terra then, no, she hasn't been in close proximity to anyone," Markus supplied, and what sounded suspiciously like a growl escaped from Rosa's throat.

"So we've got literally hundreds of people to search through to find the new green ranger? Unless, of course, it happens like attitude-problem here –"

"Pot, meet kettle," Orion said, folding his arms across his chest.

"– and we don't find the ranger until after he or she has morphed, we're basically looking for a needle in a haystack." Rosa sighed. "All right, I'll keep an eye out in class."

"Me too," Markus said.

Orion just nodded, briefly and sharply.

ooooooooooooooo

The sound of gentle snoring echoed around Rosa's Chemistry class.

The reason?

Their teacher had put on an incredibly boring, very old video, which was the class' cue to have twenty minutes of much-needed sleep. The video was so old that it was still in black and white, and even some of the clothes were beginning to come back into fashion.

Rosa and Evan were two of those who weren't asleep, and were resorting to passing notes between them and, in Rosa's case, occasionally poking her friend in the ribs to stop her from snoring.

_You bothering taking notes?_ Rosa scribbled onto the paper and handing it back to Evan, courtesy of a couple of people who had managed to stay awake too. A few minutes later, a reply came back.

_No, this has been covered in class a few days ago. If you'd been paying attention you would have recognized that. I hope you're going to read over 'your' notes before finals._

_Hey, I just didn't want to miss anything vital._

_ Then I'd suggest not writing notes and actually paying attention._

_ Looks who's talking…or writing, rather._

_ I already know what they're talking about, you don't._

Even though Rosa wrote a reply to him, Evan refused to write one back and instead kept his head buried in his arms for the remainder of the video, also trying to catch up on his sleep.

After a while, Rosa did too, but not before looking at her morpher. The power bar for the green ranger was still at zero and it was starting to look like whoever the green ranger was, Rosa didn't know him.

ooooooooooooooo

Markus was bored out of his mind, and that was putting it mildly. He normally found Math to be mildly interesting, but today's lesson was absolutely pointless to him. The teacher was going through the exact same section he had done a couple of weeks ago and, if Markus didn't know better, he would have said his teacher was beginning to get very forgetful.

Sighing to himself, and tapping his pen against the desk, Markus looked at the clock hanging on the wall. Five more minutes and then he'd be able to see if Aneka, Rosa or Orion had managed to find the new ranger, because he hadn't.

Finally, the bell rang and Markus grabbed his bag and belongings and rushed out of the classroom. He was still trying to fit everything back in his bag when he ran out of the school's front doors.

ooooooooooooooo

Normally, Orion would have stayed behind after school for running practice, but he was too tired, his muscles were complaining and he just generally did not feel up to running a mile or so before heading home. Stuffing some of his books into his locker he closed it, offering a small smile to the girl who seemed to have been following him since yesterday. He walked out of Angel Grove high just in time to see Markus disappearing off into the distance.

As he didn't live that far away from school, Orion opted to walk home instead of catching the bus and, unfortunately, managed to meet up with Rosa part-way home.

"Didn't know you walked home," Rosa commented after they'd exchanged greetings.

"Not worth getting the bus, not far enough," Orion replied, stuffing his hands into his jeans pockets. "I prefer walking anyway."

"Pretty much the same with me and Markus. Well, not so much the liking walking, but we don't live that far away from the school, so…" Rosa trailed off, uncertain of what to say. "Um…sorry about my attitude yesterday."

Orion shrugged. "Eh, doesn't bother me."

"Well…all right…you know, you don't live too far away from me, maybe five minutes' walk away."

"Meaning if you headed to school five minutes later you'd be able to walk with me?" Orion snorted. "Yeah, good luck. In case you haven't noticed, I don't exactly get along well with people, especially not sophomores who think they know everything in the world."

Rosa stopped in her tracks, allowing Orion to get a fair distance between them, which Rosa would never make up unless she ran towards him. Orion smirked to himself, having managed to get out of associating with Rosa unless necessary, but missed the glare Rosa was drilling into his back.

ooooooooooooooo

Markus was in Terra for the second time in two days, which was unusual as he normally only went there once a week. However, he did have a reason to be wandering around Terra: he was trying to find the green ranger.

"Weren't you here yesterday?" Cursa asked with a smile as Markus walked past her.

"Yeah, I was, I'm meeting someone here," Markus said, looking around discreetly, trying to see if there was anyone there who looked familiar. He thought he recognized someone, but wasn't able to say if he'd seen them yesterday or not.

"Oh? Who're you meeting?"

"My girlfriend," Markus said, and was about to try and make up an escape when Cursa dashed off to grab someone's empty glass, money or to give them a new drink. Glad to be free, Markus began weaving his way through the tables, not entirely concentrating on what was happening right in front of him, more focused on watching the middle-distance.

As a consequence, Markus only realized he had collided with someone when he had actually hit them.

"Oh, sorry about that," the person Markus had collided with said. "I guess I should watch where I'm going, that's the second time I've collided with someone in two days."


	9. Power and Questions

**A/N: **Well, after two months, here's the ninth chapter.  


Chapter Nine – Power and Questions:

_That's the second time I've bumped into someone._

Markus quickly glanced at the person standing in front of him. Blond hair, blue eyes, wearing a green top and sandy shorts, Louisiana accent…and the exact same person Aneka had ran into the previous day.

"I'm Alex."

"Markus. You wanna sit down?" Markus said, gesturing to a nearby table, but Alex shook his head.

"Can't, I've got to get back home soon. My mom's going to be calling me in about an hour, and if she can't get a hold of me, she'll start to panic." Alex sighed. "You know what parents are like. Move halfway across the country and they panic. Move _out_ of the country…you'd be answering fifteen emails a day from them." Alex said goodbye to Markus and walked out of Terra. Alternating looks between the pool table, which was looking very tempting, and Alex walking out and heading to God-knows-where, Markus muttered a silent curse.

"This is so going to end up being a pain in the neck," he said to himself as he spun around on the spot and began to jog out of Terra, trying to see where Alex had gotten to. _And I can't even follow him from a distance,_ he added as he spotted the blond-hair, green-top combination and began to follow that person, hoping it was Alex. _Rosa_ _has no idea how lucky she is._

ooooooooooooooo

As a consequence of not being able to conduct surveillance from a distant, comfortable spot like back at Terra, Markus had to make do with following Alex around, either at ground level in the more densely-populated sections of Angel Grove, or by perching on the edges of tops of buildings where someone wouldn't mistake him for a suicide attempt. He had debated about morphing when he was standing atop the buildings, but he reasoned that a ranger would cause more concern than a normal person.

"Who knew surveillance could be so boring?" Markus muttered on one of his short stints atop a building. Sitting on the edge, he was leaning his head in his hand, and the elbow connected on his knee. The sky was beginning to become overcast, which signaled that not-so-nice weather was beginning to roll in.

Sighing, Markus brushed stray hair out of his face and glanced around, trying to see where the green ranger was. He was starting to panic when he noticed Alex walking away at the edge of his vision, suddenly looking down an alleyway and jerking back as quick as he could.

However, as quick as Alex moved, it wasn't fast enough. Sinking down to his knees, he grabbed one of his ankles in pain moments before morphing into the green ranger. Standing up, Alex looked around in confusion before demorphing again just as quickly and began to run back the way he'd walked.

"That's one thing taken care of," Markus said as he opened a communication channel to Rosa's morpher. "It's Markus. I think I've found the green ranger Meet me at Angel Grove Park."

ooooooooooooooo

"Not bad," Rosa said as the last Okomor fell to the ground and disappeared in a scattering of black pixels. Orion simply looked at her, his lance disappearing in a flash of blue light before he demorphed.

"Wouldn't have taken so long if you didn't keep on interrupting me."

"Oh, you mean like 'watch out, he's gonna impale you' or 'that's gonna go straight through your heart if you're not careful'?" Orion looked at Rosa again, and headed towards the door. Pressing his hand against the control panel, the 'park' disappeared, being replaced by a plain white hologram training room.

"Nu-uh," Rosa said, dashing over to a weapons locker and grabbing a pair of quarterstaffs. "You," Rosa said, tossing one over to Orion, "are going to stay here and practice."

"Point?" Orion asked as he snatched his quarterstaff out of the air. "I can just morph and fight people that way. I don't need to be practicing this stuff."

"Oh sure, I'll make sure to leave you alone when Okomors attack a public place where you can't escape and morph without people noticing, see if you can fight unmorphed then."

Rosa stepped forwards, swinging her quarterstaff around, aiming for Orion's right shoulder. Seeing this, Orion drew his own staff up, crashing it into Rosa's. With a sharp twist of his wrist, Rosa dropped her staff and grabbed her own wrist, looking at Orion with a half-smirk.

"Well, that proves you can."

Orion dropped his own staff onto the floor and walked off, teleporting away when he was outside of the training room.

"And that proves you've still got the same attitude," Rosa huffed as her watch started beeping. "Yeah? Who is it?"

"It's Markus. I think I've found the green ranger. Meet me at Angel Grove Park."

ooooooooooooooo

"So who is the guy?" Rosa leaned against a tree, looking at Markus. They were standing in a relatively unoccupied area of the park, under the shade of a group of trees. A group of kids from the Angel Grove Elementary were kicking a soccer ball around randomly, completely ignoring their teacher's instructions. The ball was sent flying towards a blond-haired male sitting on one of the benches, who kicked it back distractedly.

"Alex, dunno his last name, met him in Terra." Markus glanced around the park, trying to avoid eye contact with Rose as he knew what she'd ask next.

"Anything else?"

"…Nope."

"Well then, how're we supposed to find him again?" Rosa snapped, glaring at Markus. "It's not exactly like he's gonna walk up to you and say 'hey, Markus, I dunno if you know anything about this, but I saw a strange animal wandering around and I became a Power Ranger. Do you know anything about it?' It's not gonna be that easy." Rosa huffed, then smirked as she noticed a new person walking across the grass. "Check out the pyromaniac."

The newcomer looked no older than Rosa, about fourteen or so, but also seemed to have an overzealous obsession with fire. His hair was dyed red and orange and spiked up so that it resembled fire, and both his t-shirt and sneakers were adorned with flame patterns. His jean shorts were, amazingly, flame-free and plain.

"Never understood why people need to announce their obsessions to everyone in the world," Markus muttered, frowning as the pyro collided with one of the elementary school children on purpose, and then started yelling at the child to watch where he was walking. Snatching the soccer ball from the same child, he kicked it wildly, watching as it flew through the sky and landed in the branches of a tree close to where Markus and Rosa were standing.

"Think he's the only person who matters in this world," Rosa snarled, glaring over at the pyro who simply gave a cheery wave back and pulled something out of his shorts pocket. A tiny spark of flame revealed what it was: a box of matches. "Idiot," Rosa said, walking up to the tree where the soccer ball was being held captive and looking at it. "Some help here?" Rosa called over her shoulder to Markus, turning around to look at him when she realized he was laughing.

The child the pyro had collided with had apparently had enough and walked up to the teenager, kicking him in the shin as hard as he could. Although the child hadn't done much, if any damage, the pyro had started glaring at and cursing out the child.

"Yeah, very funny, now are you gonna help me get this ball down or what?" Rosa said, her hands on her hips as she tried to look sternly at Markus. "Or am I gonna have to risk climbing up the tree, falling out and breaking my leg instead?"

"I'd imagine you'd fall out of the tree and break your leg," a new voice said, and Rosa turned around to look at the pyro, who had a smirk on his face. "How long would that take to heal, ranger? A week, perhaps?"

Rosa blanched for a few seconds before glaring at the newcomer. "Insane asylum's that way," she said, pointing in a random direction. "I think they're missing their resident pyromaniac."

"Pyromaniac? I think you've got me confused with someone else," he said, lighting another match and holding it up to his face. Despite it being dangerously close to his face, he seemed to suffer no ill-effects. "A pyromaniac is someone who thrives on creating and using fire, neither of which I am. I, instead, _am_ fire. My name is Pyraia."

With a half-smirk, the flame on the match exploded towards the tree Rosa had been in the middle of climbing. With a curse, Rosa tumbled out of the tree awkwardly and landed heavily on her legs, twisting her left one slightly.

Glancing behind herself, Rosa caught sight of the tree, which was now a lump of charcoal, and glared again at the monster from underneath her mask. She had morphed while half-jumping, half-falling from the tree, and was now fully-clad in ranger armor.

"Now you're just pissing me off," Rosa said, drawing her bow out of morphing space and breaking it into two daggers.

"And what're you gonna do about it? Attack me with those toothpicks of yours?" Pyraia taunted, the smirk still on his face. The flame of the match crept closer and closer to his fingers, threatening to burn them.

"'Least I can do more damage like this than if I were unmorphed. How old are you? Twelve, thirteen?" Rosa sneered, and Pyraia simply chuckled to himself, as if it was an inside joke between himself and Rosa.

"Thirteen? Oh, no, much more like thirteen _hundred_ years old. And, like you Power Rangers, I too go under a guise." As Pyraia finished speaking, the flame spluttered and extinguished, having reached the end of the match. A second, brighter flame took hold on Pyraia's fingers, covering them in bright, foot-high red-orange flames.

As if blown by and errant wind, the flames dashed across his body, seeming to burn up his skin, leaving behind something charred but unmistakably not skin. Once the new material had cooled enough, Rosa and Markus were able to see what it was: armor. Curved orange metal armor, decorated with flames and with long blades appearing at almost every joint: knuckles, wrists, elbows, shoulders…

"Enough of this horseplay!" Rosa hissed when Pyraia was still only half-transformed. Twirling one of her daggers around, she cautiously stepped towards Pyraia, who looked back at her, that all-knowing smirk still on his face.

_Doesn't he do anything_ but _smirk?_ Rosa thought briefly as she broke step and rushed towards Pyraia. Unfortunately for her, she timed it at the exact moment Pyraia had finished transforming. His flame-decorated armor covered every part of his body and his helmet curved from the back into a single point. The only part of his body which wasn't covered by armor were his eyes, which instead were protected by an orange, plastic-like visor.

"Guess the little ranger wants to play," Pyraia said, abandoning all pretence of being a teenager. He brought up one of his elbow blades casually as Rosa came within striking distance, slicing an inch of so off the point of her dagger when she dared to try and attack him.

The sheared portion of dagger dropped onto the ground, the grass fizzling away where it landed, leaving backed soil where it lay. Rosa glanced down at the tip of her dagger and then back to Pyraia, feeling for the first time that this might not be as easy a fight as she thought it would be.

"Give my regards to Waylan, won't you?" Pyraia said with a sneer as he began forming a fireball in his hand. "It would be morale-boosting for him to know that his successors were defeated by a lesser monster than he."


	10. Regret

Chapter Ten – Regret:

Rosa grimaced as a jet of white-hot flames was blasted from Pyraia's open palm, hitting her in the chest. Although her morphing suit was designed to absorbed most major damage taken in battle, Rosa still felt the force behind the blast, and that had been enough to knock the wind out of her. Instead of risking morphing in front of an entire park full of people, like Rosa had, Markus had chosen to discretely teleport away, morph and then teleport back. Unfortunately for Rosa, Markus hadn't quite reached the 'teleport back to the park' section yet, meaning she was fighting alone.

"Come on, I've just woken up from stasis, is this the only challenge I'm going to face?" Pyraia taunted, holding his arms out at ninety degrees to his body. With a quick flick of his wrists, two plasma swords appeared, one in each hand.

Rosa mentally cursed as she tried to breathe, still sucking air as Pyraia walked closer, taunting her by moving slowly. A malevolent grin ripped through the armor covering his face, revealing sharpened teeth…and promptly changed into a snarl as Markus slashed him across where his spine presumably was.

Pyraia spun his head around close to a hundred and eighty degrees, flicking his left wrist so that the plasma sword it was holding now faced backwards, and thrust it towards Markus' chest.

"And here I was thinking that rangers fought fair," Pyraia said as the sword found its mark, a faint sizzling being heard by the three combatants. Grimacing underneath his helmet, Markus knocked Pyraia's sword away using his own, then broke his in half. "Two efficient fighters against one? Isn't that what most people would call cheating?" he added, as Markus tried to get his breath back.

"And most people," Rosa began, stepping back a few steps and attempting to reform her bow. A flash of pink light covered the daggers as they reformed (the quiver of arrows appearing at the same instant) and, to Rosa's relief, saw that even though one of the daggers had been damaged, it hadn't affected her bow in the slightest.

"And most people would say," Rosa began, pulling out an arrow, readying and firing it, "that all's fair in love and war." She smiled as the arrow found a chink in Pyraia's armor, sticking out at a ninety degree angle.

"Human clichés," Pyraia said, momentarily making one of his plasma swords disappear, using the now-free hand to grab the arrow and pull it out, snapping it in half and throwing it to the ground. Drawing out a feather from nowhere, Pyraia threw it up into the air, watching as it split into a dozen or more Okomors, all of which surrounded Rosa.

Pyraia turned back into his human guise, and smiled at Rosa. "Have fun!" he called in a child-like voice, before running off and giggling. Rosa attempted to follow him but, as soon as she was within arm's reach of one of the Okomors, he shoved her back into the center of the circle.

"I'm beginning to hate these things," Rosa said, taking a chance and splitting her bow into her daggers.

ooooooooooooooo

"They are so stupid," Pyraia said to Kyuuon, still giggling and still in his teenage disguise. They were in a murky cave, the faint sound of dripping water echoing everywhere and driving Kyuuon insane. "Did they really think I'd just walk up to them and allow them to beat me like that?" He clicked his fingers, finally having stopped giggling, and reached into his pocket for his matches.

"They're getting overconfident," Kyuuon replied, grinding his teeth. Between the water and Pyraia, he felt like he was going to explode, quite literally. "Six days ago they were two, the red and yellow. Now, they are finalizing their plans on how to find the green ranger, the fifth ranger, which means that soon they will be at full strength."

"But didn't you say –" Pyraia took a match out and struck it, watching the dancing shadows on the walls caused by the flame. "– that the blue ranger is very reluctant to join them?"

"Reluctant or not, I imagine that if he were called upon to help fight, he would join them. He does, after all, know what kind of power he has been bestowed with."

"Really?" Pyraia said, waving his hand over the match-flame and drawing it up into a long, thin thread which nearly touched the roof of the cave. It only lasted a few seconds before the match burned out. "Seems to me like he's just a typical arrogant teen."

"Which you neatly duplicated in your encounter with the red and pink rangers." Kyuuon folded his arms across his chest, letting out a sigh of annoyance as Pyraia took out another match and lit it.

"Duplicated? Heck, no. The blue ranger thinks he's invincible, I _know_ I'm invincible, there's a big difference."

"How can you imply that you are invincible when you were nearly destroyed by the previous rangers?" Kyuuon said, baring his teeth in an unfriendly smile. "I seem to recall that, if you hadn't teleported back to Hachimen's palace, you would not have been here to fight the new rangers."

"I knew what I was doing," Pyraia sulked, flicking his fingers and watching as small points of fire shot out from the match. "Didn't get killed, did I?"

"You were very close to it," Kyuuon said, turning his back on Pyraia and beginning to walk out of the cave. "If you weren't given a respite, a _chance_ to teleport away –"

"I KNEW WHAT I WAS DOING!" Pyraia screamed, a white-hot blast of fire slamming into Kyuuon's back, making it blister. "I KNEW, I KNEW! I'M NOT STUPID! I'M NOT AN IDIOT! I WAS CAREFUL, I PLANNED IT ALL TO HAPPEN!" With a faint hiss, indicating that Pyraia had put his match out, the cave once more delved into a dim light, barely enough light for Kyuuon to see by.

Kyuuon smiled a smile no one in the cave would have seen as he watched Pyraia teleport away, no doubt to somewhere where he could sulk for hours, possibly days.

"And yet, whenever someone questions your judgment on that fight, you go on the defensive," Kyuuon said before teleporting to Hachimen's palace.

ooooooooooooooo

"Three down," Rosa said, as one of the Okomor's Markus had been fighting turned into black smoke, "God knows how many left." Spinning one of her daggers in her right hand, almost trying to emulate the move Pyraia had used against Markus earlier, she jabbed her arm backwards, the blunt end of her dagger digging in to the nearest Okomor's stomach, or thereabouts.

Spinning around, Rosa raised her left leg high, kicking the Okomor in the head and pulling out her dagger in the same, uneasy move. The Okomor was knocked to the ground, and finished off by a slice across his chest, courtesy of Rosa. Almost instantly, another Okomor rushed at her, kicking the broken dagger out of her hand with a dull snap.

Rosa gasped in pain, the daggers disappeared back into morphing space as she gripped her broken wrist, not seeing the kick an Okomor aimed at her chin. The Okomor's foot finding its mark, Rosa's head snapped back and she crumpled on the ground, unconscious and unmorphed.

"Rosa!" Markus yelled, attempting to break free from the Okomor he was fighting and failing. Splitting his newly-reformed sword into two, he began to hack and slash at the nearest Okomors, paying no heed to any injuries he was sustaining. Eventually reaching Rosa, he picked her up off the ground, slipping a hand around her waist to keep her standing. Moving his other arm around so it looked as if he was trying to hug her, he pressed the teleport button and concentrated on the command center.

ooooooooooooooo

"Well, you can morph by –" Aneka broke off as a red beam swept into the command center, disappearing to show Markus holding on tightly to an unconscious Rosa. "Take her to the medical bay," Aneka advised. "What happened here?" she asked, once Markus had returned.

"There was a creature called Pyraia in the park, we fought him, then he set a load of Okomors on us and ran off. We were fighting when Rosa was –" Markus trailed off, finally noticing the other person standing in the room with himself and Aneka. "Why are you here!" he yelled at Alex, who looked distinctly uncomfortable, but also confused. Turning to Aneka, Markus asked, "why weren't you two at the park, helping us? Rosa wouldn't –"

Aneka too looked uncomfortable and her eyes darted quickly to one of the computer consoles before looking back at the floor. Turning around, Markus followed her gaze.

The console was nothing more than an empty shell, only a few wires left dangling from it, the rest in a pile next to the console, printed circuit boards and microchips in a second, separate pile next to the wires.

"That console," Aneka said quietly, "is used to detect monster threats and also activates the alarm alerting us to their presence."

"And you decided to put it out of action for, how long? Hours, days? It took you three weeks to rebuild this place!"

"For good reason," Aneka said, looking at Markus angrily, who looked away. "I'd only just become a ranger when your presence was detected, so I had no time to rebuild this place. Between training you, battling Okomors and Kyuuon and going to college, I never had much time to give to rebuilding this place. In fact, if I may say so, I rebuilt this place pretty damn quick! It was a husk when you first got here, remember?"

"If it isn't broke, don't fix it!" Markus snapped, turning back to look at Aneka.

"Maybe I should go," Alex said quietly, but Aneka glared at him and shook her head.

"We were being warned of monster attacks, why did you feel the need to change that?" Markus continued as Alex sighed in resignation and leaned against one of the intact consoles.

Aneka opened her mouth but said nothing. She had no idea how Markus would react if she said that, because of something Rosa had said a few days ago, Aneka was trying to modify the warning system and enhance it. Instead:

"Where was this attack?" Aneka asked, glancing over at Alex. "It'd be a good starting battle for Alex, considering he never fought the Okomors when he first morphed."

"Angel Grove Park, why didn't he fight them initially?"

"Because he ran away once he'd demorphed. The Okomors landed at the place he'd initially morphed but, when they found no one was there, they disappeared." Aneka shook her head. "How come no one else had thought of doing that?"

Alex looked slightly sheepish. "Well…I wasn't thinking about avoiding drawing monsters to me, more like wondering how quickly I could get out of there, fall asleep and pretend it was all a dream."

"You're not the only one," Aneka muttered quietly.

"What was that?" Markus asked, looking at Aneka quizzically.

"Nothing," she said, turning to look at the medical bay. "What injuries does Rosa have?" she asked, looking at Markus who simply shrugged.

"No idea," he said. "She was holding her wrist when one of the Okomors kicked her and knocked her unconscious."

"It's either bruised or broken, and I'm more willing to bet on the latter," Aneka said, alternating looking at Markus and Alex. "Do either of you know how to set broken bones?" Both Markus and Alex shook their heads, and Aneka closed her eyes in mild irritation. "All right, no matter, I'll do it myself. Markus, Alex, you need to head back to the park and finish fighting those…" she trailed off as she saw Alex looking at Markus, open-mouthed.

"Markus, from that coffee place?" he asked, and Markus hesitated before nodding.

"Yes, why are you asking, can't you recognize me?" Markus said in confusion, and Aneka coughed slightly.

"Markus, you're still in morph," she said, trying to hide a smile. "Normally, people would recognize when they had a huge, heavy helmet on their head."

"Very funny," Markus sneered as Alex too began smiling, and demorphed. "Now come on, let's teleport to the park, we need to get rid of those Okomors." Alex hesitated, before looking at Aneka. "Something wrong?" Markus asked.

"No, nothing, only…" Alex began.

"Only what?"

"…I don't know how to morph _or_ teleport."


	11. Thermal

Chapter Eleven – Thermal:

"Why didn't Aneka tell you how to morph or teleport?" Markus said to Alex as they walked across the park, trying to see if there were any Okomors still remaining. "More to the point, how did you get to the command center _without_ morphing?"

"Well, Aneka teleported me to the base, and I'd really only just gotten there when you turned up. She was in the middle of explaining when you appeared."

"Oh, sure, blame everything on me. No wonder your spirit animal is a snake."

"Hey, didn't you hear what Aneka was saying just before we left? 'Snake' does not automatically mean 'loyal only to oneself'. Wriggling out of problems and things I don't want to do, without making people suspicious, maybe." Alex sighed. "There's nothing here, why are we even bothering to check?"

"Personally? I'd rather check that those Okomors had disappeared than to think they had and find out in tonight's news that monsters had been rampaging all over Angel Grove." Markus glanced around before looking back at Alex. "All right, looks like they've disappeared, so you can get back to answering fifteen messages from your mom. Happy now?"

"Not very," Alex muttered, waiting for Markus to teleport away before he began to walk back to his apartment. In Alex's mind, some things were safer when your feet were on the ground, like walking.

ooooooooooooooo

"There was nothing there," Markus said almost in the same instant he appeared in the command center. Almost, as he had a check to see if Aneka was in the control room before speaking. "How's Rosa?"

"She's fine, her wrist will take a few days to heal and she should be conscious in no time. The only problem we're going to have is how to explain where her broken wrist came from, and why it healed so quickly." Aneka looked up from the console she had been leaning over, and then quickly looked down at the floor. "I'm sorry about earlier, I didn't think Hachimen would send another monster so quickly, I didn't think he'd even have the chance to build one for a good few days."

"Pyraia wasn't built," Markus said, remembering something the monster had said during the fight. "He said something about stasis, about just having woken up. I think," Markus added quickly as Aneka started to speak. "I'd only just teleported back after morphing, but I'm almost sure that's what he said."

"I thought we'd destroyed him," Aneka mused. "That's a problem."

"'We'? You saying you were one of the previous rangers?"

Aneka shook her head furiously. "No, I helped the previous rangers, I was one of the people they asked to help sort out the command center, the watches, anything technological which wasn't given with the morphing power." A half-smile appeared on her face. "Well, we were occasionally asked to fix the Zords when they were damaged in battle, but that was about it, and that was more repairing than rebuilding or modifying."

"Ah," said Markus, not entirely convinced. "Why is Pyraia coming out of stasis a problem? It just means that we fight him sooner rather than later, right?"

"Well, yes, but there's a bit more. Pass me the wire strippers, will you? Thanks. Anyway, it's a problem because Hachimen doesn't have to employ time and resources into creating monsters to face us. If he's got a stash of monsters in stasis, all he needs to do for full-on chaos is to wake up a group of them and send them here. If he were to do that with no monsters in stasis, he would have to create the monsters from scratch and then send them down to Earth. It may take more time, and we may get complacent, but to Hachimen, at least from what I've heard and seen, he prefers quick chaos to careful, planned out battles."

"I still don't see why it's a problem. There's five rangers now, we just need to group together and defeat the monsters Hachimen sends down until he runs out of those ones in stasis, then we can relax."

"You wouldn't be saying that if we were faced with six monsters. One monster plus a load of Okomors, four or five rangers can easily deal with that. Three monsters is pushing it, but so long as the rangers are well-trained, it's doable. Four or more monsters with only five rangers…we're slaughtered." Aneka stood up, pressing her hands against her back as she leaned backwards. "There, that's the alarm redone."

"Why were you modifying it anyway?"

"The alarm used to differentiate between varying levels of danger. For instance, a bunch of Okomors appearing wouldn't register very high, but two monsters plus Okomors? Red alert. At the moment, everything registers on the same level, which is why I was trying to fix it. No point in sending all five rangers to defeat half a dozen Okomors, is there?" Aneka asked rhetorically, and Markus shook his head. "Guess it's gonna have to be postponed if there's a chance of this happening again."

"So, how _are_ we going to explain Rosa's injury?"

"I was thinking sprained. By the time Monday comes around, her arm should have healed enough for a loose bandage to be put on it. It should still support her arm but, if not…" Aneak sighed. "I don't think there's any way we'd be able to disguise her arm healing in a week or two, so she'd have to keep the bandage on for the full six or eight weeks."

"And Rosa's just going to love that," Markus said dryly.

ooooooooooooooo

Rosa's first thought upon waking up was not, surprisingly, _why does my wrist hurt_ but instead _oh, great, I'm back in this damn place again_. She had good reason to be annoyed: not only had an Okomor, a foot soldier, broken her wrist, but she'd woken up in the same bed as previously.

And Aneka _still_ hadn't fixed the light.

Mumbling and cursing, Rosa sat up and looked around, cradling her head in her uninjured arm in a vain attempt to ward off a headache. The medical bay looked the same as it had done the last time she was here, which was no surprise: it had only been four days since her last visit.

The door linking the medical bay and the main room opened, and Aneka walked in, smiling in relief once she saw Rosa was awake.

"I was beginning to worry," Ankea said as she walked towards Rosa and inspected her wrist. "You've been unconscious for a couple of hours, it's gone seven."

"Urgh, great," Rosa moaned, collapsing back onto the bed and moving her uninjured arm to shield her eyes from the light. "Can't you do something about that," she said, looking sideways at Aneka. "I doubt patients would get much R&R with a bright light shining in their faces."

"Sorry, lighting's a low priority in this place," Aneka said, her relieved smile turning into a rueful one. "You'll just have to make do with not getting injured so often."

"Hey," Rosa said, attempting to sit up. "The first time was an accident, this is the first time I've been _really_ injured!"

"Regardless, it's only been a few days since you last ended up here. I know how…extreme you can be in karate, it wouldn't be wise to push yourself as hard when you're a ranger."

"I know my limits," Rosa muttered, then groaned and pressed a hand against her forehead. "But headaches go beyond my threshold. Got any Advil?"

"Plenty," Aneka said. "You'd be surprised how often it's used here." Aneka closed her eyes in annoyance as the alarm started to sound. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to call up and convince a certain ranger to help us."

ooooooooooooooo

"It's a good thing my aunt isn't at home today," Orion complained as soon as he appeared in the command center. "What's the big emergency, anyway?"

"Rosa's been injured in battle," Aneka said as she walked through the doors leading into the medical bay, and Orion just snorted. "As such, we're effectively a ranger short, and we need you to take her place."

"Even if I did, you'd still be a ranger short."

"No," Aneka said, drawing out the syllable as if she were trying to explain something to a young child. "Technically, you're never there during a battle. If Rosa is otherwise incapacitated and you're used as her replacement, we're back up to having four rangers."

Orion blinked. "Four rangers? I thought you were looking for the green ranger, which makes five: red, yellow, pink, blue and green."

"I said _effectively_ we're back up to having four rangers. While we do have five rangers now, one of them –" Aneka glared at Orion "– isn't interested in helping the group fight, which means we really only have four rangers we can depend on."

"Fine, I'll help," Orion said grudgingly. "What's the problem?"

"One of Hachimen's monsters by the name of Pyraia has reappeared in Angel Grove. The Okomors he called up were the ones who injured Rosa, and as such we need you to fight in her place. Markus and Alex, the green ranger, are following him at the moment, and they'll call us when he starts causing trouble, and we need you to actually respond to that call, understood?" Orion jerked his head sharply in what Aneka took as a nod of acceptance. "Good."

Aneka and Orion both looked at their watches as they started beeping, and Orion sighed in annoyance before silencing his watch while Aneka answered hers. He glanced up at Aneka with a scowl on her face, and she simply replied to his expression with a smile.

"Ready?" she asked, before morphing and teleporting to the park, Orion following reluctantly.

ooooooooooooooo

"So four rangers turn up to fight me this time?" Pyraia taunted, now back in his armored form. "So generous of you, however these are extremely uneven odds, wouldn't you agree?"

"I'd say it's perfectly reasonable," Markus said with a cocky tone as he stood at the front of the group, all of them with their weapons drawn. He extended a finger on his free hand, and Aneka and Orion took that as their signal to attack.

Orion took the direct route of simply bashing Pyraia with his lance, while Aneka took a more discreet route, stepping in for a couple of quick slashes with her daggers, then stepping back out of reach before Pyraia could retaliate.

On Markus' nod, Alex too moved forwards and began to cautiously attack Pyraia with his axe. Cautiously, as the blade of the axe was rather large and its swing unpredictable, so much so that whenever Orion or Alex got too close to it, they risked being attacked by it.

Under attack from three rangers, Pyraia pulled himself into a makeshift ball and stayed there for a good few minutes while the yellow, blue and green rangers continued to attack.

"Hey, Marky, how about doing some work instead of sitting there like an overblown, arrogant dictator," Orion yelled over his shoulder in annoyance just before Pyraia uncurled himself rapidly and erupted into flames, sending the three rangers flying backwards.

"Preferably before we all get roasted," Orion added, glaring at Markus. The latter opened his mouth to reply, but was interrupted by Aneka.

"He's weakening," she said, the smile evident in her voice. "It's his do-or-die tactic: increase his offence but reduce his defense in the hope that he'll damage us before we can defeat him."

Markus smiled too. "Well then," he said, splitting his sword into two. "Let's see how much damage he can really take." With those words, Markus quickly covered the distance between himself and Pyraia, becoming a whirlwind of blades when he was within striking distance. Markus felt that Pyraia was beginning to weaken when he was thrown back like the other three, landing face-down on the ground and muttering under his breath.

Scrabbling to his feet, Markus began to attack once more, quickly joined by Aneka, Alex and, eventually and reluctantly, Orion. Although attacking in altogether, nothing they did seemed to be able to destroy Pyraia.

That is, until a load of arrows appeared out of nowhere and struck Pyraia in the face, neck and upper chest. From where he was hit, cracks in his armor began to radiate out, spreading across his body until they covered every inch, and then he exploded into shrapnel.

"What the –" Markus said, spinning around to try and find the shooter, and spotted Rosa standing under the cover of a couple of trees.

"Thought you needed some help," Rosa said, demorphing after making sure no one was around, a huge smile on her face. "Guess five's a team."


	12. Recovery

Chapter Twelve – Recovery:

"Do you have any idea how irresponsible that was?" Aneka began to say once the five rangers had teleported back to the command center. "I warned you not to use that arm until you had to, which would have been Monday at school, in case there was a risk of injuring it further. Naturally, you completely ignore my advice and not only use that arm immediately, you use it in battle!" She grabbed Rosa's injured arm and began inspecting the cast, making sure it hadn't broken or cracked.

"Aneka, cool it, would you?" Markus said with a sigh. "Yes, what Rosa did was against what you told her, but did you really expect her to sit around here knowing we were fighting Pyraia?" Aneka was silent. "I'll take that as a yes then.

"Between the four of us we were probably weakening Pyraia little by little, but I doubt we would have destroyed him as quickly if Rosa hadn't appeared to help us."

"Personally," Aneka eventually said, looking up from Rosa's arm. "I'd much rather have four rangers fight and win after ten minutes than to have a fifth, inured ranger and finish the battle in four minutes." She jerked her head towards the medical bay. "You, back in bed now," she said to Rosa, who simply glared back.

"I save all your butts, and that's the thanks I get? Grateful, aren't you?" Rosa said, folding her arms across her chest and not moving.

"Being grateful doesn't come into this equation whatsoever. What does come into this equation, however, is the fact that you were injured and that by going into battle, you were risking being injured even more. A broken wrist we can cover up, what we can't cover up is you being in intensive care for a week!"

"Amelia…Emily…whatever your name is, just chill for a moment, all right?" Alex said, stepping forwards and placing a hand on her right shoulder. "We defeated that monster, Rosa's not any more injured than she was previously, there's no need to get hypersensitive over it."

"Easy for you to say," Aneka snapped, turning her attention away from Rosa and towards the three male rangers. Orion was looking around the room in boredom; Markus was casting curious glances over Aneka's shoulder, presumably at Rosa; Alex was looking at Aneka with and expression of worry and concern.

"You're getting too worked up about this. Relax, go for a run, practice fighting…whatever calms you down, do it. You're too stressed out over this," Alex continued, but Aneka was hearing none of it.

"I don't need to calm down. The way the rest of you are acting, it seems like you're treating this as a game! The world, the _entire_ world could be destroyed, and you're telling me to calm down?" Aneka glared at Alex before turning around to look at Rosa once more. "Rosa, back in the medical bay, _now_!"

Surprisingly, Rosa obeyed Aneka's order this time, slinking off into the medical bay and shutting the door quietly behind her.

"My aunt's probably wondering where I am," Orion said, looking at a dark stain on the ceiling. Brining his head down, he looked at Aneka briefly before teleporting away.

"Well, I'd try getting home to call my mom, but –"

"I've got karate practice to get to," Markus said, grabbing Alex's arm and pulling him along as he teleported out of the command center. No doubt Aneka's mood wouldn't stretch to being polite long enough to remind Alex on how to teleport.

ooooooooooooooo

"Your arm's fine," Aneka said an hour or so later, once she'd finished her examinations and tests on Rosa and her arm. "It should heal in a couple of weeks, but try to keep it on for a minimum of six weeks or so. Say you got injured in Karate and your instructor took you to the hospital to get it fixed, okay?"

Rosa nodded, slipping off the table and grabbing her jacket. She made her way to the doorway of the medical bay, before pausing and turning around to look at Aneka.

"Anything you want to tell me?" she asked, and Aneka simply shook her head.

"I'm fine, got some work to do for my course, but that's about it," Aneka replied, quickly busying herself with tidying up microscope slides. Rosa gave her one last look before she teleported away.

Aneka sighed, her mind seeming to wander off as her body moved her around the command center, absently picking up discarded objects and placing them in their rightful places. Pausing in the middle of the command center, Aneka stayed there, deep in thought until a small beeping emanating from her watch drew her back into reality. Shaking her head gently and tying her red hair back with the nearest hairband she could find, she pressed a button on her watch, closed her eyes and teleported to Caltech.

ooooooooooooooo

"Hey, Aneka, you in here?" Mei-Mei asked, peering her head around the doorway of the room she and Aneka shared, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. "Hmm, odd, didn't hear you in here."

"I was just…resting," Aneka said, swinging her arm around to indicate her messy bed. "I've been alternating between being full of energy and ready to collapse at any moment."

"Bremner was looking for you," Mei-Mei said, putting her books down onto the table and sitting on her bed, looking at Aneka. "Are you sure you're all right, you've been…" she looked down at the floor and muttered something in Mandarin. "Sorry," she said, looking back up. "Sometimes, I just can't –"

"Remember the English equivalent? I have similar trouble, 'cept the only language I know _is_ English," Aneka smiled, and looked out of the window. "Yeah, I've been 'out of it' and 'not myself' for a good few days. I know, there's been a lot of…family stress recently." _I guess you could call the spirit force team a 'family' as such_.

"You know Mandarin?" Mei-Mei said, looking a bit surprised.

"Well, only bits of it, enough to do a rough translation. Did you come here for something, specifically?"

Mei-Mei nodded. "Yes, Matt was wondering if you were able to play pool tonight, he wants to get back at you for him losing the previous game."

"Not tonight," Aneka said, collapsing onto her bed with her back to Mei-Mei. "I'm too exhausted to be bothered with anything like that. Tell him I'll take him up on his offer on Sunday."

"But we have that special lecture on Monday morning, modern science of origami, you booked it up weeks ago. I'm sure you wouldn't want to miss that because of a simple game of pool."

Aneka laughed, turning over to look at Mei-Mei. "Mei-Mei, you have a lot to learn if you think it's just a 'simple' game of pool. All right, tell him I'll play him on Monday, and make sure he knows that he's gonna be in for a good thrashing."

"Thrashing?" Mei-Mei questioned, looking a bit confused.

"Meaning, I'm gonna finish the game before he even knows what happened to him," Aneka said with a toothy smile.

ooooooooooooooo

"Look mom, I'm _fine_," Rosa said through gritted teeth as her mother examined her wrist for what seemed like the millionth time in half an hour. "Lazaro-Sensei took me to the hospital and got it fixed. The insurance for the class was more than enough to pay for it, so stop worrying!"

"But it is your right hand, how are you going to manage to write in school?" her mother asked, still fussing over the broken appendage.

"Mom, I'm left-handed."

"Oh…well…make sure you don't damage it any further anyway. I don't like the idea of going to the hospital because you haven't been careful." With those words, Rosa's mom wandered off into the kitchen, humming some off-beat and irregular tune Rosa had never heard of.

Sighing to herself, Rosa turned around in order to head up to her room, but instead managed to collide with Zac whom, when he looked up at his sister, had a huge grin on his face.

"What's up, squirt?" Rosa asked, and Zac held a marker up, his grin never wavering.

"Sign your cast?"

ooooooooooooooo

"No mom…seriously…no, I _don't_ need you to come visit me, weren't you going to have the weekend off?" Alex sighed, wiping his free hand against his forehead. "Mom, listen to me: I'm nineteen. We live in a climate where terrorists could attack us at any moment, and you're worried about me being attacked by monsters? C'mon, there's more chance I'd see a monster and be able to escape before being killed or injured than I would a terrorist."

_Well, more accurately, escape, morph and return as a ranger to help fight the monster,_ Alex added to himself as he looked at his watch, trying to attempt to listen to what his mom was ranting on about.

"Huh? Oh, yeah, dad's birthday. Don't worry, I'm sure I'll be able to get a ticket to fly down to visit you for a few days, don't worry about it." Alex rolled his eyes. "Mom, I don't need babysitting. I'm perfectly fine here in Angel Grove, okay? I promise, if anything terrible does happen, I'll come straight back home if that makes you feel better. Okay, all right? Bye." Alex put the phone back in its cradle, and surveyed the room. "So, what's for dinner?" he muttered to himself as he spotted a three-day old pizza lounging around on the table.

ooooooooooooooo

_Aunt's home,_ Orion thought to himself as he heard the front door close and footsteps stomping on the floorboards above where he was standing. The footsteps paused, then turned around and began walking in a completely random direction before returning to their initial spot.

Pulling his t-shirt back on and using a towel to wipe the sweat threatening to pour into his eyes, Orion began to walk towards the basement door when a familiar tow-headed person appeared in the doorway.

"Hey Orion," Markus said, Alex hovering over his shoulder. "Listen, I know your aunt doesn't get home very early most days –"

"Where'd you hear that from?" Orion snapped, but Markus didn't flinch.

"– so we…I mean, I," Markus amended at Alex's annoyed cough. "I was wondering if you'd like to have dinner with us. As, you know, friends?"

Orion said nothing for a few moments, simply wiping off the sweat while the two blonds tried to gauge what his reaction would be.

"Rosa coming?" Orion finally asked as he began to walk up the stairs, and Markus shook his head. "Aneka?" Another shake of the head. "…I'm probably going to regret this, but I'll be ready once I've had a quick shower."

Once Orion had disappeared up the stairs, and was fumbling about in the bathroom, Alex turned to look at Markus and said, "Talk about a personality change, I thought he'd turn us down flat."

"Me too," Markus said, although a small smirk of all-knowing appeared briefly on his face.


	13. Ivy

**A/N:** Unlucky number for some…especially me when I found out I'd somehow "misplaced" the original version of this chapter. Updates may also be more sporadic as a) I'm entering the examinations period and b) for some reason the next few chapters seem to be struggling to be put on paper.

Chapter Thirteen – Ivy:

"Let me go!" a female voice said, struggling against the Okomors which held her, but to no avail. No matter how furiously she struggled, or how hard she tried to hit her attackers, they refused to release her.

"And why would we want to do such a thing?" Kyuuon said as he materialized in front of the woman. "Not when we've got such interesting plans for you." Glaring at Kyuuon, the woman glared at him before launching a spit-ball which hit him in the eye. Wiping the spittle away, Kyuuon just laughed.

"Ah, yes, I was warned that you could be…troublesome. However, there is something we can do to help you with that attitude of yours." Smiling and baring his fangs, Kyuuon drew an ordinary syringe, filled with a dark purple liquid, out of mid-air.

Wrenching one of her arms free, the woman managed to scratch across an Okomor's face, injuring one of its eyes. Almost instantly she found herself pinned to the ground by the other three Okomors which had been holding her, and Kyuuon kneeling in front of her face, which was pressed uncomfortably against the asphalt.

"I always wondered why humanity refuses to accept the inevitable. Wars will happen. People will get murdered. Children will starve to death in far-off countries. Nothing you can do will change that." As he spoke, Kyuuon brushed aside the woman's black hair, exposing her neck. Ordering one of the Okomors to hold her hair out of the way, Kyuuon found the woman's jugular vein, and injected the purple substance into her.

ooooooooooooooo

"Come on, come at me like you're gonna attack me," Orion said, standing in a defensive pose, in between Alex and the makeshift goal, made from their discarded jackets. Alex, guarding the puck, looked anxiously at the distance between himself and his goal.

"I don't know…"

"Are you going to take that attitude when Kyuuon or someone takes a hostage and you need to think quickly in order to save their life? Or are you gonna let one of us make the decision instead? Or," Orion said, diving forwards and grabbing the puck off of Alex and shooting it at the goal. "Are you going to take the easy route, let the hostage die and then inform his or her parents that they died because you were too slow to act?"

Alex glared at Orion. "That's hardly the easy route."

"Why not?" Orion shrugged, skating away in order to retrieve the puck. "Requires the least amount of physical work!"

"Damn idiot," Alex muttered to himself, throwing the hockey stick to the side of the road and skating over to sit on the sidewalk. "Why'd I willingly attack one of my own teammates for no good reason? Ow!" One of Alex's hands flew up to his head, rubbing the spot where the puck had hit him. "What was that for?" he added as Orion skated towards him.

"That attitude of yours, it's going to get you injured some day if you're not careful."

"Oh, and yours won't?" Alex replied, having ensured that he wasn't bleeding and was now standing up. "At least I'll actually be in a battle, and not off moping in dark alleyways or whatever it is you do. Watch it!" Alex yelled as the puck was sent flying in his direction once more. "Anyone would think you're trying to kill me!"

"Leave it long enough, and someone else will do me the privilege," Orion said, removing the hockey equipment he had on and walking away.

"Man, you start to think you know him, and he decides to throw you a curveball," Alex said as he began to gather up all of the discarded equipment and lugged it back to his apartment.

ooooooooooooooo

_The one bad thing about University internet services,_ Aneka thought to herself as she saw the ETA for a two-hundred meg file shoot up to over two hours. _The internet speeds suck._

"Well, if I wanted reasonable internet speeds, I'd set it up myself," she reasoned with herself. "Although, the network providers might just question why they're giving internet access to a rock." Aneka took another despairing look at the download and, seeing that it wasn't going to be speeding up anytime soon, pulled up a game of Solitaire and began playing.

"Shouldn't you be researching?" Mei-Mei said as she crept up behind Aneka and looked over her shoulder. "I doubt that learning to re-make Solitaire will be on the course."

"I'm trying to download something which is important to the course but, as it's going to take a good two hours, I've really got nothing better to do than to play games," Aneka replied, moving a ten onto a jack, sighing when her watch started to beep.

"What's that?" Mei-Mei asked as Aneka moved to silence the alarm.

"Just something to tell me that I've got to be somewhere in half an hour. It's sort of like a portable notice board, one which tells you when you're going to be late." Shutting her computer down, Aneka grabbed her coat and pulled it on as she walked out of the dorm. "See ya later tonight."

ooooooooooooooo

"What's the problem this time?" Aneka asked once she appeared, full-morphed, in an empty, run-down part of Angel Grove and saw that Alex was there.

"Your guess is as good as mine, Amelia. I –"

"Aneka."

"Whatever. Anyway, I got a message-thing on my watch and followed the signal here but, when I arrived, there was nothing here. Nothing, nada, zip, zilch, not even a feather or whatever those Okomor wings are made from." He wiped a hand across his forehead before looking at Aneka, who had started to walk away. "You think there might be some sort of malfunction?" he yelled at her, and she only shook her head in response.

"Start looking."

"For _what_?"

"Anything which looks unusual or out of place here. I think something might be interfering with the monster detection device."

"Ooh, catchy name."

Aneka glared at Alex. "I think either Orion or Rosa are growing on you, and somehow, I don't think that's a good thing. Enough chat," she added, waving her arm in Alex's direction. "Keep looking."

ooooooooooooooo

"They've picked up the bait," a young-sounding female voice said in a sing-song voice as the illusion in front of her disappeared. Extending her faint, almost invisible wings, she used them to lift herself up into the air and turn around to face the other woman who had been watching the screen as well.

"They're hardly organized, are they, Acrojo?" the second female asked, and Acrojo smiled and shook her head.

"All the more fun for us," Acrojo said, swinging her legs in mid-air. "What's more fun than dividing a group down the middle, setting them against each other and then destroying them one by one?" The second woman shrugged and made to leave, but Acrojo put out a hand to stop her.

"What is it?" the second woman said neutrally, nodding her head when Acrojo handed her a dull red object. "Ah, this. I thought I wouldn't need something to transform. After all, you don't need anything."

Acrojo smiled and transformed into her human form, then back to her monster form, showing off.

"That is true, but you weren't born one of us, were you?" The woman shook her head in reply, then left, leaving Acrojo to chuckle to herself about the chaos she was about to unleash.

ooooooooooooooo

"So, let me get this straight," Orion said, holding his cell up to his ear and pretending to speak into it while in reality, he was speaking into his watch/morpher. "You want me to search the whole of Angel Grove on my own, and neither you nor Alex can help because you're looking for a device which creates fake monster alerts and which may or may not even exist? Yeah, sure, see ya in five weeks' time." Breaking the connection before Aneka could reply, Orion scanned the sky, muttering under his breath in annoyance, mutters which quickly turned to curses when he spotted several black specks in the sky.

Morphing quickly, Orion had his lance in his hands when the Okomors had landed. He moved to attack the monsters, but faltered when he saw that they weren't entirely the same creatures he had fought when he first became a ranger.

The Okomors he was used to were unarmored and without weapons, but these hand both. Helmets covered their heads, and they had armor plating across their chest, protecting what could be presumed were vital organs, and each carried a spear in their hands.

Orion swore, loudly. "I am so gonna get my butt handed to me."

"You made that assumption correctly, human," one Okomor said as half a dozen rushed forwards. Moving his hands in different directions, Orion broke his lance into two, holding one in each hand yet waiting for the Okomors to get closer. A couple of the monsters took flight, flying in circles above Orion's head and aiming their spears at him as a warning.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Orion said, almost challenging the Okomors to come closer. One took the challenge, rushing forwards almost clumsily, holding its spear out in the hopes of impaling Orion on it.

Quickly sidestepping the attacking Okomor, Orion jabbed the nearest lance into its neck, going straight though. Pulling the lance out, Orion ignored the fallen Okomor and shifted his attention to the other Okomors.

After a few moments of frantic jabbing, stabbing and sidestepping, most of the grounded Okomors lay fallen at Orion's feet, bleeding black blood from various wounds and all unmoving. Panting slightly from the exertion, Orion reconnected the lance and moved his left hand up, aiming to contact Aneka and tell her what had just happened.

Two things occurred which caused him to forget this train of thought.

One was the fact that all the Okomors, which he thought he had disposed of, suddenly all stood back on their feet at once, all with weapons at the ready yet their wounds still profusely bleeding.

The second was a red blur which knocked half of the Okmors back down onto the ground.

When the red blur stopped moving, Orion could easily identify it as a ranger and, mistakenly, thought it was Markus until he looked closer. Although the general shape of the ears was correct, there was no red mane and, instead, the mask had small black dots positioned randomly on it. Plus there was also the fact that the suit design was clearly female and so, Orion hoped, was the person wearing the morphing suit.

"Are you going to stand there all day, gawping at me, or are you going to help?" the red ranger yelled in annoyance as she drew a bolas out of morphing space and threw it, entangling two Okomors with it.

"Well, actually, I was going to stand here and let you do all the work, but seeing as you so generously offered, how can I refuse?" Orion said with more than a hint of sarcasm, splitting his lance once more and jabbing the points through the entangled Okomors' necks. This time, they disappeared in a puff of black smoke.

Between the red ranger entangling the Okomors and Orion finishing them off, the fight was over fairly soon. The red ranger kicked the last Okomor to the ground, waiting until it had disappeared into smoke before turning around to look at Orion. There was barely an inch difference in height between the two She took off her helmet, revealing her black hair contrasting with her white skin. She seemed to share the same self-satisfied smirk as Orion, almost using it to mock him.

"You know," she said, demorphing in a flash of red light, "you new guys have no idea as to what to do. Aneka chose a really bad team."


	14. Reunion

Chapter Fourteen – Reunion:

"All right, what the hell was that just now?" Orion asked once he had form and substance, and saw that the woman had teleported them both to a wooded area, beyond which he could just make out the shape of a fountain.

"That," the red ranger said, brushing her hair out of her eyes, "is what's known as a General Okomor. Basically, something built like an Okomor but stronger than one, yet weaker than a monster Hachimen may send. They can be a damn nuisance though," she added, walking over to the fountain and sitting down on the edge, running a hand through the water.

"And why could they be a nuisance? We handled them pretty well together," Orion said, and the woman just sighed.

"It's not the fact that they're tougher than Okomors that's the problem – like you saw, they go down like flies if they're fighting people who know what they're doing – it means that Hachimen's attempting to start wearing you down. How long have you been rangers for?" Orion shrugged, but the woman didn't see it. "Not even two weeks in and he's starting to tear down your defenses. It does mean you've done a good job at annoying him though," she added with a smile.

"Yeah, sure…" Orion said, mentally adding a '_whatever you say'_ to the end of the sentence. "Listen, I missed hearing your name in the midst of all that 'excitement', so mind reminding me?" he said with more than a touch of sarcasm.

"Oh, yes, I'm sorry, I'm Princess Emilé Shaula," the woman replied with her own sarcasm, smirking when Orion rolled his eyes. "Ivy Andrews, and you're Orion Williams, I assume?"

Orion narrowed his eyes, yet nodded quickly, sharply and stiffly, more of a reflex jerk than anything else.

"Thought so, no one else Santoro told us about had your…interesting personality." Pulling a purse out of her pocket, and a coin out of her purse, Ivy threw the coin into the water fountain and was silent for a few moments before standing up.

"What was that for?" Orion asked as Ivy grabbed his elbow.

"Good luck, I've got the feeling we might need some soon. C'mon, we need to talk somewhere more…private."

ooooooooooooooo

"How come you survived? Aneka told us that all of the previous rangers had been killed," Orion asked, standing stiffly in the corner of Ivy's room, keeping as far away from her as he possibly could. Not that he didn't trust her; he just sensed something odd about her.

"Yeah, the original team was destroyed, well, all but one of them –"

"The coward who skipped out on the fight."

Ivy glared at Orion. "Yeah, the coward who was hunted down and destroyed by Hachimen after the fight. Santoro managed to survive and was ascended from the red ranger to the gold ranger, and began to amass a new group of rangers. The main reason Angel Grove hasn't been overrun in the past couple of years is because we've been looking after it. But now…it looks like Hachimen's increasing the attack frequency and, well, we're not able to cope on our own." Ivy stood up and began to pace on the floor, head bowed in thought. "The one thing I don't get is how and why a second set of coins were created. We've got the originals, and yet you guys are still Power Rangers. Hmm…" she shrugged. "Another thing to ask Santoro."

"You keep mentioning him, but who is he?" Orion snapped, and Ivy looked at him, as if debating whether or not to answer that question.

"Waylan Santoro, former red ranger when Richardson…Aneka…was part of the team, ascended to gold ranger after his team was killed." Ivy flicked some hair out of her eyes. "Pretty decent leader, doesn't let the killing of his team get him down."

"I thought Aneka was only tech support back then," Orion said, folding his arms and looking at Ivy in suspicion.

"Hey, 'team' can mean pretty much anything, from the people who are actually rangers to the people who know their secret and kept it, or decided to work for them." Ivy smirked. "Aneka was one of those who decided to work for them, gave her some good hands-on practise for college." Ivy was about to say more when her watched beeped and, looking at it, she smiled.

"Another of your friends has been found, Santoro wants us back at our base ASAP."

ooooooooooooooo

"Guess who?" a cheery female voice asked Alex as she wrapped her hands around his eyes, blocking his vision. Staring slightly, Alex spun around to see his girlfriend standing behind him with open arms and a warm smile.

"How'd you get here?" Alex asked, slightly surprised.

"Duh, by plane, did you think I drove here?" she replied, stepping forwards and enveloping her boyfriend in a hug, which he cautiously returned. "You all right?"

"I'm fine, Chelsea, just a little jumpy from those monster attacks," Alex replied, taking a seat at a nearby table, glad that his girlfriend had decided to choose Terra to 'surprise' him instead of a remote, out-of-the-way forest on the edge of the town.

"How's your life been in Angel Grove?" Chelsea asked, taking a seat opposite Alex, cupping her chin in her hands and staring intently at him. "Any new friends, enemies, lovers…" she added the last one with a wink.

"New friends, definitely, don't think I've made any enemies and definitely no new lovers that I know of. Apart from all the monster attacks, it just seems like a home from home."

"With less chance of a hurricane passing through," Chelsea added solemnly and with a sigh. "But then, I guess earthquakes are about as unpredictable as some hurricanes can be."

"That's true," Alex said, jumping when someone placed a couple of menus onto the table. Jerking his head up, he saw that it was just Cursa.

"Bit jumpy today, aren't you?" Cursa asked with a frown. "The usual?" she asked Alex, and he nodded. "And you'd like –?"

"Just a coke please, I'm not that hungry," Chelsea said, handing the menu back. Cursa nodded, taking the menu and walking away. "She's kinda cute."

"…What?"

"I said, she's kinda cute, and you've obviously been coming here a lot for her to memorize what you usually have."

"Okay, I seriously don't get –" Alex began, then started to laugh. "You think I come here just so I can catch glimpses of her? Lissie, you've got a serious case of the green-eyed monster here if you think I like her."

"I thought I told you to stop calling me that, it's pathetic," Chelsea snapped, and Alex's eyebrows almost disappeared into his hair. "Sorry, college has been kinda stressful lately, part of the reason I decided to take the weekend off to come and visit you."

"What's the rest of the reason then?" Alex asked, knowing full well what she was going to say.

"I missed you," they both said at once, and Alex smiled. "Good guess, huh?"

"Very good," Chelsea said with a small smile, leaning over the table and giving Alex a quick kiss on the cheek. "Although, if I were you, I'd hurry up and make a food choice before they decide to kick us out."

ooooooooooooooo

"You're getting rusty," Rosa said with a smirk as Markus landed on his back in the middle of Angel Grove Park. They were more-or-less shielded from view by a couple of trees, Rosa's 'cast' discarded along with both of their school bags and jackets.

Offering a hand to help him get up, Markus took it. Pulling Rosa towards him, he kicked her in the stomach, letting go of her hand at the same time and sending her sprawling to the ground.

"So're you," Markus said with a grin as Rosa glared at him.

"That wasn't fair," Rosa said, inspecting her top. "There had better not be any grass stains on this; pink and green do not go well together."

"So you wouldn't mind a little bit of blood then? Pink and red do go well together," he added as Rosa just looked at him.

"Well, they'd have to, you don't think I'd stay with you if I were the pink ranger and you the green?" Rosa said, a smile emerging on her face as Markus looked shocked. "Oh, come on, I'm not shallow you know. You'd think after a good few years of knowing me, you'd also know that little fact too." Rosa took up a fighting stance, indicating that she was ready for another fight.

"Well," Markus said, poising in his own fighting stance. "You never know, people do change for seemingly no reason."

ooooooooooooooo

If she didn't trust herself not to do anything attention-drawing or embarrassing, Aneka would have fallen asleep in one of her previous days' lectures. As it was, she didn't, and was working on less than two hours of sleep a night, which meant that she was running the risk of either destroying half of the ranger base, or collapsing from exhaustion.

Sooner or later, human or machine would reach breaking point, and neither situation was preferred.

As if to illustrate this point, Aneka's watch started beeping, and she groaned in frustration before quickly turning it off.

"Not like Hachimen's sent anything challenging since Pyraia anyway," Aneka muttered, wiping her eyes and leaving a trail of oil across them. She reached back to grab the motor she had been fumbling with, then decided against it. Pressing a button on her watch, she sent a message to Orion. Leaving the motor where it was, Aneka stood up and grabbed a nearby cloth and wiped her hands on it, forgetting the oil streak across her eyes.

In front of her was a half-complete zord, standing at roughly 150 feet tall, painted yellow with black spots and was a member of the feline family. Or, in other words, it was a leopard zord, currently owned by Aneka.

A small sound caught her attention but, as no alarms had started blaring, Aneka ignored it and instead went searching for the cover panel she had placed somewhere. Finding it huddled in the corner where Markus' zord was being kept, she slotted it into place and took a step back.

All five of the zords had been totaled in the fight against Hachimen three years ago and, even with the technology available in the command center, it had taken Aneka a good year and a half of working to get them all back online and working properly. Her tinkering nowadays was simply to keep them in working order.

Aneka's heard jerked up, and her eyes narrowed: she had just heard the same sound as she had previously, almost exactly the same. Grabbing her morpher, she walked out of the zord bay, taking off her battered sneakers to ensure she made as less noise as possible.

When she'd only taken a few steps, she heard the sound yet again, only this time from behind her, the direction she had just walked from. Looking over her shoulder and seeing nothing, Aneka began to question her sanity. Still, she ran her index finger across her morphing coin, just in case.

"Miss me?" a male voice said, enveloping Aneka in a hug from behind. Acting on instinct, Aneka grabbed him and threw him over her head and shoulders, watching as he landed painfully on the floor in front of her.

"Guess that answers my question," he added as he stood up, Aneka's eyes widening in shock.

"Waylan…"


	15. Memories

Chapter Fifteen – Memories:

"Do you remember when we had our first date? It was at the cinema…must have been four years ago or more. The film was terrible, so about halfway through we walked out. Decided to have a little moonlight walk beside the river until we had to get back in time for curfew," Waylan said, and Aneka simply nodded. Head held up high, hands placed casually in his jacket pockets, he gave the impression of someone who'd gotten their first day off in years, and was planning on enjoying it to its fullest.

"Mmm, I remember," Aneka said non-committedly, continually keeping Waylan in her range of vision. "Of course, it would have been even more romantic if you hadn't slipped into the river and needed to be rescued. I was cleaning silt out of my sandals for three days after that."

Waylan stopped abruptly, giving Aneka a small kiss. "It was worth it, wasn't it? We were pretty close to having a mud bath though."

"Mmm," Aneka replied, but was saved from further comments by her watch beeping. Looking down at it, she glanced at Waylan, who simply smiled at her.

"Just like old times."

ooooooooooooooo

"Well, well, long time no see, yellow ranger," Acrojo said as both Aneka and Waylan rushed up to confront her in the middle of the city. Attacking with a spinning kick, Waylan instead ended up sucking dirt as Acrojo reappeared behind him, giggling.

"Tsk, tsk rangers, has it been so long that you've forgotten who I am?" Acrojo said, shaking a finger at the rangers. "Well, I think it's time you were educated again. Go, Chiron!"

As Acrojo spoke, a centaur appeared in front of Aneka and Waylan and, almost instantly, began to grow in size until it topped out at around two hundred feet tall. Turning his head, the visor glowed as a crossbow was leveled at the two rangers.

Aneka gritted her teeth, mentally swearing as she remembered the state she'd left her zord in: nowhere near good enough to fight in. Movement out of the corner of her eyes caught her attention, just to see a sparking arrow heading straight for Waylan.

Aneka instinctively shielded her eyes as the arrow hit, her heart pounding as a cloud of dust covered Waylan. Setting her mouth into a firm grimace, she morphed just as the dust lifted to show Waylan, morphed and uninjured.

His shield disappearing in a flash of gold light, he called his halberd in the same flash, holding it ready in case of attack.

"So, honey, how're the zords holding up?" Waylan asked, turning his head slightly to look at Aneka, recalling his shield when Chiron attempted to step on the gold ranger.

"Pretty trashed," Aneka muttered, looking around to see that Acrojo had disappeared and taking her chance to call up the other rangers in her team. Waylan caused his shield to disappear almost in the same instant he tried for a spinning slash attack, barely managing to damage Chiron's hoof.

"Guess you're gonna need backup then. Titan time, Phoenix!" Almost as soon as he had finished speaking, a low screech came from the north, the opposite direction to where the command center was, and out of a group of low clouds flew a golden phoenix zord.

Swooping down, wings folded back, the phoenix spread then at the last possible moment, slashing Chiron across the torso before flying back up and circling around Chiron lazily.

"Santoro!" a female voice called, and Aneka looked around to see who it was. A morphed female red ranger was rushing towards them, with whom looked like Orion following a fair distance behind. "We got the message from the base, we came here immediately," she added as she pulled up level to her leader, ignoring the half-annoyed, half-confused look Aneka was giving her.

"What about the others? Jones, Peterson?"

"Haven't found them yet, they must still be out looking for the others." She shot a look at Aneka before continuing. "Huntsman repaired the new team's zords, they should be useable straight away."

"How did –" Aneka began, but was cut off by Waylan

"C'mon Aneka," Waylan said, brushing past Ivy and grabbing Aneka's hand. "Suit up and we'll trash this horse in next to no time." Nodding, Aneka quickly morphed, but then hesitated, not entirely trusting Huntsman, whoever he was, to have repaired her zord.

"Titan time, Leopard!" Orion and Ivy joined in, saying their respective animals' names and summing their zords. The lynx zord leapt from the top of a building, landing in front of and snarling at Chiron, while the leopard zord did the same from behind. The gorilla zord hung back, waiting for a moment of opportunity.

"Ready?" Walyan asked, looking between Ivy and Aneka, who both nodded.

"Wait, ready for wha–" Orion begun, but the three other rangers had teleported away before he'd finished his sentence. "Great, get a few experienced rangers and they forget that there are some people who don't know a thing." Sighing, he pressed the teleport button on his wrist morpher and did his best to imagine what the cockpit of the gorilla zord would look like.

"They're getting better," Orion heard Waylan say when he finally decided to open his eyes, looking at a complex control panel in front of him. "Give 'em a few leads, a few hints, and they get the message."

"He's not a child," Aneka scolded, and Waylan chuckled.

"You sure about that, honey?"

"Less talking, more fighting."

"Yes, ma'am. You know, Ivy, you're worse than I ever was."

The phoenix zord rushed forwards, the lynx and leopard zords moving as well, positioning themselves on opposite sides of Chiron. With a little persuasion, Orion placed his zord at the last empty section.

The phoenix zord seemed to fold in on itself, twisting and turning such that when it landed on the ground it resembled not so much a mythical creature as a humanoid with short wings. Reaching behind its back, it pulled a sword out of mid-air and, running forwards, slashed Chiron across the chest. His momentum taking him past the centaur, extremely close to the gorilla zord, Waylan stopped the zord and spun it around, standing still in shock.

"What the–that's not possible!" Waylan yelled over the comm. devices in the zords. Instead of being disabled or crippled like Waylan had expected, Chiron was simply standing in the middle of the road, as if the zord hadn't even attacked him.

A light female giggle drew all the rangers' attention to a small, child-like figure stood on a nearby building roof.

"Try as you might, you can't kill him! Strike him down as many times as you want, cut off all his limbs, they'll simple heal and grow back, and there's nothing you can do about it!" With another giggle Acrojo leapt into the air, zooming away and disappearing into the clouds. The phoenix took a swing at Chiron, but was intercepted before the blow even landed.

Looking at him, Chiron simply threw the sword, and thus the phoenix zord, out of the way, sending him crashing into a nearby building.

"They're gonna hate us for that," Ivy muttered, changing her own zord and pulling out what looked to be a whip. Extending it, the lynx wrapped it around Chiron's front hooves and yanked sharply, pulling him off his feet. The phoenix scrabbled to its feet, while Aneka changed her zord. The leopard pulled out a couple of daggers and began slashing at Chiron. The phoenix zord snuck up on Chiron, holding its sword tightly and plunging it in Chiron's back, through whatever the equivalent of his lung and heart was.

Instead of collapsing or exploding into shrapnel, like Pyraia had done, Chiron simply turned around to look at the phoenix, before leaping up and back-handing him, sending him flying into another building.

"That shoulda killed him," Ivy muttered as her zord flicked the whip back into its wrist, splitting it into twin swords and running forwards, starting to slash at Chiron when she got close. Diving forwards with a thrust, the lynx zord overbalanced and fell to the ground as Chiron harmlessly teleported a few feet away.

"Pitiful," Chiron said as he snorted. "You can't even afford to give me a decent challenge," he added, looking at the phoenix zord, which was struggling to stand up again. Walking over to the phoenix zord, Chiron kicked it in the stomach and, being enough to overpower the systems, the zord disappeared and unceremoniously dumped Waylan, still morphed, onto the sidewalk.

"Pathetic humans. Next time you mount a challenge, send more than your weakest fighters," he said before teleporting away, leaving the rangers looking at each other in confusion.

ooooooooooooooo

"Well, that was a waste of time, right Aneka?" Waylan said once he, Aneka and Ivy had landed back in Aneka's command center. Aneka, upon hearing her name, simply sighed and shook her head. "Ivy?" he added, but was given a reply of a hasty wave of the hand, a non-verbal 'don't distract me, I'm busy'. She commandeered one of the handful of computers lying around and booted it up, frowning in confusion.

"Hey, leopard, do you get internet access here?" she yelled across the control room.

"What do you need internet access for?" Aneka snapped, a little testy, wondering what Ivy was up to.

"I need to look up something, leopard. Is that okay with you? Look, you can even watch over my shoulder while I use the computer, all right?" Ivy said, turning around and glaring at Aneka.

Aneka returned the glare, but said nothing. Taking this as acceptance, Ivy grabbed her cell phone and began messing around with it, occasionally dashing off to get a wire or two, but eventually managed to get a connection to the internet.

"I knew it," she said, mostly to herself, catching everyone's attention. She raised her voice as she began reading out loud off a page off the internet. "_Chiron is one of the few well-known named centaurs in mythology; he was one of the centaurs that Heracles encountered and fought. One of Chiron's arms was cut off in the battle, yet Chiron survived as he is immortal._"

"That doesn't sound too good," Waylan said, casting a glance in Aneka's direction. "How can we defeat something that's immortal?"

"We can't," Aneka said bluntly, walking past Waylan and looking over Ivy's shoulder. "Can I get a look at that?" she asked, and Ivy nodded, moving out of the seat and allowing Aneka to sit down.

"I've gotta get going anyway, my mom's gonna wonder where I am soon. Catch you guys soon," she added as she teleported out of the command center.

"I'm afraid I've gotta leave too, promised a couple of my friends that I'd meet up with them for pizza, beer and a football match," Waylan said, and Aneka turned her attention from the computer screen to Waylan.

"Aren't you still a little young to be drinking?" she asked, and Waylan just laughed.

"Honey, I think being the savior of the planet has given me more than enough rights to be an under-age drinker. Besides," he added with a sly grin. "Who can really tell good fake ID cards from the real thing?" He walked over to Aneka and gave her a quick kiss on the lips. "See ya tomorrow," he said, teleporting away moments after he'd finished speaking.

Aneka had a smile on her face for a few moments, recalling what she had said to Markus about drinking alcohol, before becoming serious. Standing up, she said, "Computer, run energy scan of the center of the city commencing two hours ago and ending fifteen minutes ago."

As she moved to also teleport out of the base, she noticed two shimmering specks in the case where she kept the unowned morphing coins. One was becoming white, an impressing of a bird on it, and the other was turning green, with an impression of a bear on it.

"It can't be…" she whispered to herself. "Xi?"


	16. Infiltration

A/N: This chapter is dedicated to Machiko Soga, whom passed away on the 7th of May after battling pancreatic cancer. She played Bandora in Zyuranger, the footage of which would be later used in the first series of Power Rangers, Mighty Morpin' Power Rangers. Her footage was reused and dubbed to create the villan Rita Repulsa. RIP, Soga-san.

Chapter Sixteen – Infiltration:

"So, you want us to keep an eye out for a potential new green ranger?" Rosa said, glancing over at Alex. "I think someone's gone off the deep end a little."

Aneka sighed, "Yes, I know we've got a green ranger already. Another one's been found, the green ranger from the previous team."

"And they're all coming out of the woodwork now, aren't they?" Orion asked rhetorically, glaring at Aneka. The five rangers were holed up in Orion's aunt's house as she was working late once again, and it was the only safe place they could talk.

"Waylan was the previous red ranger; Xi was the previous green ranger, that's it. Ivy, the red ranger you saw today, is someone completely new, someone I've never met before."

"And evidently someone you're jealous of," Rosa added, staring in confusion at Aneka when the latter glared at the former. "What? He's been missing for over three years, then he turns up with a female red ranger, I'd be worried if you weren't a little jealous."

"I'm not jealous, just curious as to how half the previous team managed to survive and also where these other coins are coming from." Digging in her jacket pocket, Aneka pulled out the green and white coins and held them up, showing the other rangers. "By all the laws I've studied, neither of these coins should exist, and neither should yours if Waylan's team got the morphing powers first. I've never heard of more than one coin of the same color existing at the same time, never."

"No offense Aneka, but how deep did you look?" Markus said, speaking for the first time since arriving. "It's not exactly like it's a commonly-occurring phenomenon, it's not like this is an experiment which has occurred thousands, millions of times before with expected results which always happen in _this_ way, never in _that_ way." Markus gestured with his left hand on _this_, and right with _that_. "Unless you've found evidence of this occurring earlier, we have exactly two sets of results to go on: the team from three years ago, and us."

Aneka opened her mouth to speak, decided that what she was about to say was going to be taken the wrong way, and said something different. "It's like matter and anti-matter. If you get them in close proximity, they both destroy each other, as you can't have matter and anti-matter existing in the same plane of existence."

"So," Alex said with a crooked smile. "Who're the anti-Rangers, the Nega Rangers? Us or them?"

ooooooooooooooo

Rosa sighed, a hand automatically going up to massage her forehead. Oddly, what Alex had said about 'Nega Rangers' seemed to have stuck in her mind, the only thing from the meeting which had. Aneka had been going about so much techno-babble that Rosa had gotten a headache from it, which was never good.

"Hey, squirt, no leaving the table until you've finished all your vegetables," a familiar voice said, and Rosa grinned: there were only two people who called Zac 'squirt'.

"Yeah, right, you gave me a ton of vegetables on purpose; the plate's piled with them!" Rosa heard the sound of a chair being scraped across the floor.

"What did I say? No leaving the table until you've finished!" Rosa dumped her coat on the stairs and her shoes near the stairs, and headed towards the kitchen.

"I _have_ finished, I'm leaving these for Rosa to eat."

"Sure, I'm positive she's going to love freshly-chewed veg."

"Sure would!" Rosa said brightly, looking at her older brother.

"Hey Rosa," Maxi said, then looked down at Rosa's arm. "Who'd you annoy in a fight?"

"Injured myself in karate class, a bit too over-zealous as Lazaro-sensei said. It'll heal in no time. Anyway, I thought you were supposed to be at MIT. Don't you have a presentation to do in a few weeks' time?"

"I've almost finished it, just thought I'd spend some time at home" Maxi said in reply. Zac, taking his chance, slipped off the chair and dashed across the kitchen, dumping the vegetables into the bin. "Hey! Do you know how much that lot cost?" Maxi yelled, jerking his head around as he heard the bin lid clatter back to its usual position.

"Probably a whole lot less than if you didn't dump half a bag of them on my plate, you _know_ I hate peas!"

"Thought that was Rosa who hated peas?" Maxi said, and Rosa shook her head

"Nope," Rosa said. "It's _beans_ I hate. Anyway, I can't chat long, unlike you I've got a ton of homework to do."

"Me too!" Zac said with a wide grin, rushing out of the kitchen and up the stairs before Maxi could get a hold of him.

"Was he always this bad?" Maxi said in despair, and Rosa chuckled.

"Yup, 'fraid so. We were just so hyper ourselves when we were younger that it never bothered us." At that point, Rosa's watch started beeping and she sighed. "No rest for the wicked," she muttered, muting the sound and turning to her brother. "Gotta go meet up with some of my friends, might not be back in time for dinner."

"Try not to stay out too late, or mom will kill me," Maxi said, Rosa nodding as she put on her coat and walked out of the door, allowing it to swing shut behind her.

Maxi waited a few moments after she left, pulling out an old watch from his back pocket and looking at it. Although broken, it still retained a few of its functions, monster location and what he classed as missed 'calls' amongst the few. Seeing a red light flashing, he pocketed the watch and set out after Rosa.

ooooooooooooooo

"I'm going to be away for a few days, I just thought I'd let you know," Orion said, doing his best not to squint and begin playing guessing games in the darkened room. Aneka was at the far end, working on a computer and Orion wasn't even sure if she'd heard what he said until he heard a faint "mmm" in reply. "Not that you'd need my help anyway, not with all of these new rangers turning up."

"Uh-huh…" Aneka said, evidently not listening at all. Giving up, Orion teleported out of the control room, leaving Aneka to her own devices. Muttering a few things to herself, Aneka got up and began pacing the room, trying to figure it all out in her head.

_High energy readings, and a monster which seems invincible…_

"Do you work here all night?" Waylan said as he teleported in, getting no reaction from Aneka except for a quick glare before she resumed her thoughts. Pausing a few minutes later, she turned to look at Waylan, staring at him with an intensity that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

"Theoretically, could a power source be used for us rangers in such a way that it speed-heals injuries to the point where they heal almost the instant you receive said injuries?"

"Uh…probably," Waylan said, walking over to the monitor Aneka had seized and looking at it. "What am I looking at?" he asked a moment later, and Aneka held in a sigh of frustration.

"Basically, something or someone is supplying energy to Chiron at such a rate, and in such a way, that his injuries are healing the moment we give him any. If we want or need to defeat him, we need to find and destroy that energy outlet or source."

"And how're we gonna do that," Waylan said, a skeptical look on his face.

Aneka smiled. "Magic."

ooooooooooooooo

"Orion, is that you?" Orion's aunt, Vanessa Hawkins, was in the kitchen when Orion walked into the house, and the latter groaned inwardly.

"Aunt Vanessa, I'm seventeen, I don't need lunch made for me," Orion said testily, entering the kitchen and seeing his aunt making cute animal-shaped sandwiches. How she didn't realize that she wasted half as much bread as she used, he never knew.

"Why not, these are sweet," Vanessa said, turning around with a cat face in one hand and a duck in the other. "I've baked some shaped cookies too; do you want to help decorate them?"

"Not really," Orion said with a sigh, walking out of the kitchen and into his bedroom. Draping his coat across his bed, he leaned against the wall with a heavy sigh. _I am not a perpetual five year old,_ he thought to himself, sliding down the wall until he was sitting on the floor, legs bent in front of him and arms wrapped around his knees.

"Orion, are you packed yet?" Vanessa called up the stairs, and Orion looked around his room with a heavy groan. His travel bag was lying on the bed, having been flung there three days ago when his aunt told him they'd be flying back to Port Charles for the weekend.

"Almost," he called back, rummaging through his cupboard and drawers and randomly throwing underwear, socks and a couple of random t-shirts onto the bed, before stuffing them into the bag, not caring how creased or squashed they'd become. Walking into the bathroom, he grabbed most of the items on display, dumping them too in his bag.

"Come on, Orion, we need to be at the airport soon!" Vanessa called up yet again, upon which Orion grabbed his bag and walked downstairs, muttering "why do I have to go?" under his breath.

ooooooooooooooo

"So, what's the plan?" Waylan asked as he and Aneka walked around Caltech campus. Being past midnight, no one was around and there were only a few lights on, mostly in the library with people trying to finish off work before it closed in less than an hour.

"Don't suppose you remember Hachimen's 'base' as it were?" Aneka said, a small, daredevil smile appearing on her face as she spoke.

"No way Aneka, I'm not risking going back in there again," Waylan said, walking backwards, away from Aneka, when he saw the look on her face. "We almost got slaughtered when we tried it!"

"'Almost' being the operative word," Aneka said. "Besides, what's the chance that Hachimen is actually still going to be in the same place as three years ago?"

"Considering he thought we were dead, very probable," Waylan muttered, moving closer but still keeping a safe distance.

"If I know Hachimen, he would have moved the instant we escaped."

"Right…so what's the plan, genius?"

"Infiltrate the base, find the energy source which is making Chiron invincible, and pound Chiron into the ground the next time we meet him. You up for it?" Aneka said, holding a hand out to Waylan.

"Why not, we can't get pounded any more than last time," Waylan said, enclosing Aneka's hand in his.

ooooooooooooooo

"Aneka, Aneka, you never learn do you?" a dark figure muttered to himself as he walked through the darkened control room. By memory, he headed over to the farthest wall and hit the light switch which was there. Flickering on, the light illuminated the room, and also the sole person occupying the space.

"Three years, and it still looks the same," Xi muttered to himself as he took in the mess of wires, panels and tools scattered across the room. "More building a death-trap than a functioning command center."

Walking over to where the coins were kept, a small scanner recorded his DNA and, finding it as one of the permitted people, the polymer cover slid away, leaving Xi to grab his old morphing coin. He smiled, tossing it up in the air, saying something to himself as he walked away

"Ranger identified. Spirit ranger: three, spirit animal: polar bear, ranger color: green, name of ranger: Maxi Barnsley, age of ranger: sixteen, known relatives: Rosa, age twelve; Zac, age ten…"


	17. Past Hauntings

Chapter Seventeen – Past Hauntings:

"Kiara, get off that damned computer!"

"I'm using it, Scott. Go fiddle with your own computer."

"It's. Broken. I told you this before!"

"Well, tough love midget. Either you go fix it, or go sulk. I'm not letting you touch this computer."

"Whatever."

_I just _love _family vacations,_ Orion signed to himself, rummaging around in his bag for some painkillers. Why the whole family had to be gathered when it really only affected him, he had no idea.

Finding a crushed box at the bottom of his bag, Orion took two pills dry, before collapsing onto his bed. Three seconds later, Scott came barging into the room.

"Hey, Ori, know anything about computers?"

"No, I don't."

"But you're six years older than me! Surely you know how to do it."

"No, but if you don't get outta here right now, I'm gonna show you how much more Tae Kwon Do I know than you do."

"Fine, I can get a point, I'll just leave it the hands of some nutcase who charges fifty bucks an hour to fix it," Scott muttered, turning around and walking out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

_Aneka_ _could probably fix it in a heartbeat. That, or make it explode somehow,_ Orion thought, then groaned to himself. He rolled over onto his back, flinging an arm across his eyes and sighed heavily. Moving his arm, he looked at the watch on it and sighed again. Four-thirty, nowhere near a good enough time to try and sneak out.

Rolling back over onto his side, Orion closed his eyes, hoping to catch a nap before dinner.

ooooooooooooooo

Opening his blurry eyes, Orion looked around to see that it was completely dark in his room. Rubbing his eyes, a glance at his watch told him it was one o'clock, give or take a few minutes. Lumbering out of his room and down the stairs, he saw that not one person was awake, not even Kiara who routinely stayed up until 4AM chatting to her friends.

Walking into the kitchen, Orion opened the fridge and downed some of the orange juice there before putting it back and sitting at the table, trying to figure out a course of action. Or, at least, why no one had woken him for dinner.

"They were afraid of waking you up," a female voice said, causing Orion to leap to his feet. The chair he was on fell backwards, yet Ivy caught it before it could clatter to the floor.

"What are you doing here?" Orion said in a half-whisper, and Ivy stood the chair upright and leaned on it. "How'd you even know I lived here?"

"I didn't, pure chance. Santoro sent me on an investigation, said he'd been picking up signals, albeit faint, from this area. I drew the short straw, and here I am, babysitting." Ivy sighed, folding her arms across her chest, then looking around. "You got anything to eat here? I haven't had anything since lunchtime."

Orion snorted, then pointed to the cupboard on the far end. Opening it, Ivy took out a packet of chips and began eating them.

"What are you really doing here?" Orion asked, and Ivy shrugged.

"I told you, I'm on an investigation, finding out what that weird signal is," she said, taking another mouthful of chips.

"More like investigating me." Ivy paused mid-bite, and sighed. "Everytime I turn around you're there, watching me for no apparent reason."

"There's a reason," Ivy muttered through a full mouth. "Santoro just doesn't want to tell you lot yet, just in case you fumble and let the secret out."

"Let me guess, Santoro believes that one of us is a traitor, right?"

"…You're way too perceptive for your own good. Either that, or that know-it-all Ankea told your little group." Anger flared up inside Orion. "Well, can someone be called a know-it-all when they don't even reveal the whole truth about their past?" Ivy said, tossing the empty bag on the counter and walking towards Orion. Leaning forwards, she whispered into his ear.

Orion whipped around, aiming to kick, to punch, to hurt Ivy in some way, but she was no longer there. Instead, he was left with her scent and the lingering words in his mind, replaying over and over again.

"_Ankea killed her own teammates."_

ooooooooooooooo

"Waylan?"

"Hmm? Honey, I'm in the middle of a mission. A mission which you sent me on, by the way. Shouldn't you not be talking to me?"

"Sorry," Aneka replied, sounding not at all apologetic. "It's just…how did you survive? And why didn't you contact me before?"

"…Aneka, I've gotta concentrate on finding the energy source. I'll tell you later, okay?"

"All right," Aneka said. With her quiet, Waylan began moving on down the walkway, seeing nothing but spider webs, dust and more spider webs.

"Aneka, I'm going to go radio silent for about ten minutes, I think the signal's starting to break up."

"Roger that," Aneka said, pressing a button on the equipment before her, smiling slightly when a small light began to flash.

ooooooooooooooo

"Hey Mom, it's me. Yeah, the tearaway son again. Aunt Vanessa got the promotion, we had to move to another state for her to accept it though. California to be precise, a small town called Angel Grove. If you think this place is bad, Angel Grove is worse, if that's at all possible.

"When I said the promotion would change Aunt Vanessa's life? It changed mine too. Ever heard of a group of people called Power Rangers? Well…I'm one of them. The blue ranger, to be precise.

"I know, I don't normally talk this long but…I dunno what to do, Mom. It's a huge responsibility; technically, I'm a real-life Batman. Without the angst. Actually, I dunno, does Bruce Wayne angst?

"I'm not sure if I can actually keep it up: the school and being one of five multicoloured heroes destined to save the world. Well, it seems to be eleven now, as we've got some help from a former team. Aneka's boyfriend – Aneka's the yellow ranger – he's reappeared after about three years, with everyone thinking he's dead. He was the red ranger, now he's gold and with a new team under his lead.

"Aneka seems way too chummy and glad to have her boyfriend back. I don't trust him. No one disappears off the radar for three years without telling their girlfriend. It's not even like she didn't know about his 'secret identity': she helped with the previous team too.

"I'm setting some kind of record here, aren't I? I'll finish off quickly. It's about Aneka, actually. Well, I'm –"

"Aneka never really teaches you security, does she?" Ivy asked. Startled, Orion twisted around so fast he overbalanced and landed on the concrete. "Have fun talking to your parents? Anyone could have walked up and heard you discussing supposedly confidential issues." Orion looked at her as he stood up, brushing dirt off of his clothes

"Considering how large this cemetery is, anyone who would overhear me would have had to be coming to visit my parents. Outside of a bouquet every month, I'm the only one who visits, and the only one who actively talks with no exceptions."

"Well," Ivy said, leaning towards Orion. "Zip. Your. Lip. I don't care how secluded or alone you think you are, Hachimen could still be around. He's a golem-creator, if you even know what that means. Anything he uses can remember items spoken within thirty feet of where it started off.

"Your parents' graves, using the golem method, could relay your real name, location, favourite food, everything you've told them since you started coming here. Hachimen knows who half of you are; he could use this information to find the other half. What are you going to do when you're each fighting a lieutenant, unable to win and help someone else." Ivy's eyes twinkled in triumph. "Unable to help Aneka."

"She's a team member, nothing more. I care for her, like I care for Rosa, Markus and Alex."

"I didn't know you swung that way," Ivy teased. Exasperated, Orion stuffed his hands in his pockets and began walking down the path back to the main entrance. "Oh, come on, I was joking. Straight as an arrow, right?" Ivy added, following Orion.

Orion stayed stoically silent, until a thought occurred to him. Stopping in his tracks, causing Ivy to walk into him, he turned around.

"How did you know I'd be here?"

"Aneka told Santoro, Santoro told us," Ivy said a little nasaly, cupping her nose in her hand. Moving her hand away, she inspected it for blood. Satisfied that there was none, she looked up at Orion defiantly. "Aneka's not like Santoro: he actually tells us everything, regardless of whether it's important or not."

"And me visiting my dead parents is important how?"

"Split resources. You're here, everyone else is in California, they're not gonna reach you in time if Hachimen decides now is a good time to catch a lone ranger."

"And two rangers is better than one?"

"At least we'd be able to hold anyone off until help can arrive."

"I don't need any help."

"No, and you don't offer any either. You just run away and hide, pretending that it never happens. Then, when someone gets killed, you mope about it and think it's all your fault. Guess what? Because you didn't offer any help, it _was._"

Before Ivy could even react, she was on the floor, her hand covering what seemed to be a broken nose, blood flooding everywhere.

"Bastard. There's no way you're your father's son. Not with an attitude like this," Ivy hissed. Orion looked at her before walking off, leaving her on her own.

As he walked off, his watch started beeping. A careful scan to ensure that no one, especially Ivy, was within earshot, and he answered it.

"Orion, I need your help. How soon can you get back here?"

"Not soon enough," Orion replied, mentally wincing as he answered Aneka. "What seems to be the problem?"

"Waylan's disappeared, and I've lost his tracking signal."


End file.
